Aite: In Love And War
by Alara Rogers
Summary: Jay and Kyla are married amnesiacs, who were told they were found dying in each other's arms. Then a young woman appears who claims Jay is her old friend Joe, and everything changes.
1. Author Notes

Aite: In Love And War Aite: In Love And War 

by Alara Rogers

Aite is a Japanese word meaning literally "the other hand", and can be translated as either "opponent" or "partner." 

While there have since been several stories pairing Joe and Katse, Aite was one of the first, originally published in Bird Scramble! APA in 1991-1993. The story does not contain graphic sex, but does contain an incredible amount of angst and pain, both physical and emotional. If you don't like to read such stuff, don't read this. Also, slash fans, Katse is in female form throughout most of this story and is never sexually involved with Joe in male form at any point. So this is not a slash story. Slash doesn't bother me, but this one isn't it.


	2. Chapter 1

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Snow falls lightly on the bleak landscape. It covers the ground, shining softly white as the twilight begins. Beautiful, peaceful white, broken only by indigo and red.

The red is spread across the snow, still continues to spread, staining the falling snow with its color and warmth. The deeper colors, shades of indigo, purple and black, come clear as the shapes of two people, locked in a final embrace. Their lifeblood stains the snow. In one's hand, the gun that killed the other; in the other's, the knife that killed the one. The snow that lands on their still bodies melts with the remnants of their life's warmth.

Another shape stands against the snow, approaching. Death is her enemy. She will do battle with it, no matter who its victims were. Now she bends to the two. Their hearts still beat. She could save them, and make them anew. She could take their gifts and turn them away from the path of destruction. She could heal the madness within them both, make them happy, normal.

Later, when the searchers come, the snow has almost covered the blood, healing the rent in the peaceful white.

* * *

Aite (In Love and War)

Kyla put her clothes back on and sat down in the doctor's office, waiting for the diagnosis. Absently her eyes fixed on a pencil. She took it and began to tap it nervously against the arm of her chair, balancing it between two well-bitten fingers. With the other hand, she played with her hair, running her finger through blonde strands and twisting them into spirals.

The door opened. The pencil feel from Kyla's hand, and she looked up into Dr. Kymel's face. "What is it? What's wrong with me?"

"Nothing bad," Kymel said, "just puzzling." She shut the door behind her, walked over and perched on the diagnosis table in a rather undignified pose. "You're pregnant, Kyla." 

"Pregnant..?" Kyla stared at her. The word sounded wrong, somehow. She couldn't quite grasp it. In Kyla Samonetti's mind, the words "I" and "pregnant" seemed to be somehow incompatible. She hadn't even considered it as a possible cause of her stomach pains of late. "How..."

Kymel regarded her with a raised eyebrow. "Kyla, I assume I don't have to explain the facts of life to you."

"It's not that... I thought Jay was sterile. Or that I was. It just... maybe something else I don't quite remember."

"Well, I think your instincts had some basis. I thought you would be sterile, too," Kymel said. "But you _are_ pregnant-- and that proves I succeeded with you. Not only did I save your life, I managed to make you a healthy, normally functioning woman again. You know, that's quite an accomplishment." She began to smile, almost unconsciously,the way she always did when she got full of herself regarding her victory over death. Kyla cut her off.

"Can you give me an abortion?"

Dr. Kymel lost the smile. "An abortion! _Why_?" she asked, horrifed.

Kyla looked into her eyes evenly. "I don't want to be pregnant. I'd need to take leave from my job, maybe quit, and Jay doesn't make enough to support us both... and that would knock me off the fasttrack. I'd lose years off my career, plodding along with the other hausfraus. I think I make a much better PR person than I'd ever make amother... and I just don't feel ready." She was aware that her reasoning might sound callous, and tried to qualify it. "I hardly know who I am... I just don't feel like I would be a good mother. I'm too selfish. And Jay's worse than I am. There isn't a responsible bone in his body."

"Now that's not true. I think Jay would make a loving father. He doesn't _need_ to be responsible-- he has you supporting him. Wouldn't you consider discussing it with him?"

"It's not his body. It's mine."

Kymel sighed deeply. "Well, I'm sorry, Kyla. I'd do it if I could. Even though I don't approve at all, I'd have to respect your right to your own body. But in this case, it's out of the question. An abortion would kill you."

"What? _Why_?"

"Let me see if I can explain this... The supplements you take. You know your female reproductive system was damaged when you almost died. The supplements keep you feminine. The fact is, though, an insult to your sustem, such as an abortion, will very likely cause cancer and kill you."

"What if I stop taking the supplements? I'll miscarry, won't I?"

"Don't do that!" Dr. Kymel leapt off the table, horrified, and grasped Kyla's shoulders. "Kyla, more than _ever_ you need to take your supplements now. If you miss even a day, you might do far worse than kill your baby. You might kill yourself as well. You _have_ to take your supplements, Kyla, or I can almost guarantee you'll die."

"That-- that doesn't make any sense."

"When you're a medical doctor, Kyla, you can tell me it doesn't make any sense. Listen. I pulled you and Jay back from the brink of death. You were as close as doesn't matter. It was a miracle I was able to save either of you, let alone both. If there are a few things about your condition that don't seem to make sense, remember neitherof you are exactly normal anymore." She released Kyla's shoulders. "I do know how you feel, Kyla. When I first became pregnant, I thought it was then end of the world. But I felt differently after the baby was born. It doesn't have to mean the end of your career-- you and Jay can work something out, or you could hire some help. I could have David help. Don't worry. I don't want to see your career hurt either. I'lldo my best to make it easier on you. And afterward, if you want, I can help you prevent another pregnancy. Is that fair?"

"I suppose it has to be," Kyla muttered. "I don't _want_ to be pregnant.."

"I'll help you."

Kyla found that small comfort.

* * *

Jay Samonetti was mostly buried under his car when his wife of a year and a half walked up to him and said, without preamble, "I'm pregnant, Jay."

"You say something, Ky?" He didn't extricate himself from the car.

"Yes. I'm pregnant."

"_Preg_-- aah!" There was an audible thunk, and a fluent stream of curses in numerous languages, most of which Jay didn't remember how to do anything but swear in anymore. He slid out from under the car, still cursing and rubbing his head. "Jesus! You could have given me some warning!"

"Not my fault you're under that car all the time."

"You're fucking _pregnant_?"

"That's usually how it happens, you know."

He glared at her. "Fuck your word games, Kyla. Did Dr. Kymel tell you you were pregnant?"

"Yes. And if you care, I did ask if I could get it aborted. She says it would kill me."

"I didn't say anything about wanting you to get an abortion," Jay said hastily. He meant he wasn't _that_ averse to the notion of her pregnancy, but she took it wrong, as usual.

"Exactly when did I start needing your permission on what to do with my body, Jay Samonetti?"

"I didn't--" Skip it. He wasn't going to be able to explain. "You sound like you don't like the idea. Of being pregnant."

"No! I _love_ the idea of carrying a parasite around in my body for nine months, and then going through torture to get it _out_!"

Jay got to his feet. "I thought women were supposed to love their babies."

"This isn't a baby. It's a random collection of cells. Maybe when it's a baby I'll love it." She sighed. "In any case, I can't abort it, so we're going to have a child whether we like it or not. We're going to have to adjust our lifestyles a lot."

He nodded. "I understand. You're going to have to quit your job, aren't you?"

She stared in disbelief. "Me, quit _my_ job? Jay, I make six orseven times what you do. If I quit, we'll drop down into the poverty level. You can quit being a fireman and take care of the baby during the day instead of spending all your time on the racetrack or at the firehouse."

"_I_ can quit? You're the baby's _mother_!"

"And you're the baby's father! You don't make any money, you might as _well_ quit and take care of it!"

"I save _lives_, Kyla! You make corrupt politicians look good to the sheep that vote for them!"

"_I'm_ supporting the two of us! If I was some helpless housewife, we'd be starving in a _ditch_ somewhere!"

"Only because you'd have _spent_ all the money on your goddamn clothes and music!"

"I suppose you'd rather we lived in some rathole closet and slept on the floor?"

"I'm _not_ quitting. You take maternity leave."

"Why do I have to take maternity leave? Whose fucking _fault_ is it that I'm pregnant?"

"I never heard you complaining!"

"No, and I imagine none of the others complained either!"

"What others?" Jay asked, floored.

"The other _women_, you bastard!"

"What other women?" he stalled.

"The one whose bloody damned _lipstick_ I found in your car! It's not my brand, and Dr. Kymel doesn't wear lipstick!"

"So it was one of Dave's girlfriends. He borrows my car."

"Your racecar, Jay? The one you won't even let _me_ drive?"

"Hey, I have female racing partners..."

"I imagine you do. I imagine they rev your engines just _wonderfully_."

"That's not fair--"

"Well, you know what they say, all's fair in love and war, right?" Kyla snarled.

"Yeah, and sometimes I don't know which you think this is!" Jay exploded, grabbing the car door and wrenching it open as he fished his keys from his back pocket. "I don't have to take this crap from you, Kyla--"

"Where are you going? Don't run out on me!"

He got in, slammed the door, and started the engine without answering her.

"Dammit, Jay, stop ignoring me!" Kyla was left behind in a squeal of tires and smoke. "JAY!!"

But he was gone.

Kyla stared after him, her anger making her heart thud, and at the same time remorse starting to twist in her stomach. She had handled this all wrong. She had meant to bring up the lipstick when she was calm enough to control the argument that would result. Instead, the situation over the pregnancy-- something she _should_ be happy with, something any normal woman would be jumping with joy over-- had upset her so much that she'd exploded. And now Jay had taken off for his precious racetrack, shutting her out again--

She walked back into the house, into the bedroom she shared with Jay, and her eyes fell on their wedding picture. Things had seemed wonderful then. They had lost their pasts, but at least they still had each other-- they could replace the lives they'd almost lost, could build a new life together, a rosy future--

Thinking of how it was changing, all the arguments of late, of the evidence she was losing Jay, she began to cry, falling to her knees by the bed and sobbing brokenly, clenching her hands in the fabric of the bedcovers in rage and grief. She was losing him, her love, the one person in the world she cared about, the only one whocared about her-- losing him, and somehow it resonated with the emptiness in her past, so she knew, without any clear details, that she had lost before, had been lonely before, and she would rather die than lose again, than lose the person who gave her life meaning...

She held a high-powered job in a public relations office, designing images, writing speeches, and it seemed natural, easy. She was good at it-- it, too, resonated with the past she no longer had, and she put a lot of work into it. But nobody at work knew her. She masked herself from them as effortlessly as she designed plasticimages for the political figures her company worked for, her facade as hollow as theirs. But Jay knew her from before she had put up her walls, from before she'd quite been a person yet. They had each helped to shape the other's personality, building on the blank slate they'd both been, after Dr. Kymel had saved them... Now she couldn't imagine letting down her defenses again, letting anybody in who hadn't been there from the beginning.

If she lost Jay... she would never be able to be herself with anyone again. She would never have anyone else. She would be lonely forever. 

Kyla Samonetti wept, knowing she was somehow driving her husband away, but unable to stop...

* * *

Jay Samonetti tore down the road at 90 mph and counting, fuming to himself. _Damn_ Kyla's paranoia. If she was going to bitch like that over a lousy lipstick, he might as _well_ cheat. It wasn't like he hadn't been tempted, but he hadn't _done_ anything. Well, he hadn't slept with anyone, at least. There'd been a little necking, all right. He wouldn't deny that. But he hadn't _slept_ with the girl. If Kyla was going to give him this kind of shit, though, he might as well sleep with the women he met-- it wouldn't get any worse, at least...

Only that was wrong. It wasn't fair to Kyla to pull shit like that. He knew that. She was probably just upset over the baby. Not that she wasn't thoroughly capable of throwing fits for no apparent reason, though. God, if she was going to be like this all through the pregnancy he might just kill himself. Or her.

He did love Kyla, although he wasn't sure exactly why. She was a violent, passionate woman, a lot like him in temperament, except that her rages tended to burn cold instead of hot, and that she was a lot smarter, and knew it. It seemed to him that a compliant, quiet woman might have suited him better. But it was too late now-- they'd all seem like plastic dolls compared to Kyla. He relied on her to keep his balance. He needed someone to love and someone to love him, someone to support and someone to support him, or he'd go spinning off into a Never-Never-Land of meaningless excitement and lonely fun. He wouldn't cheat on her, really, no matter how much he was tempted, because he was responsible for her sanity, and that gave him the responsibility _he_ needed to prevent from being bored out of his mind with life.

Dr. Kymel had told him that. "Kyla has some extremely unstable tendencies. You're responsible for keeping her happy and balanced." Dr. Kymel was pretty smart. She knew Jay had to feel like he was doing somthing with his life, like he was helping somebody, or he'd feel like there was no point. At the same time, though, he needed excitement. That was why he'd become a firefighter, so he could help people and get the excitement he needed at the same time. It was also why he needed wild, unstable Kyla. And then, in some respects she was cooler and harder-headed than he was, more practical. And he needed her for that, too.

So he wasn't going to cheat on her. But damn, she could be a bitch sometimes. And if she was going to be like this the whole nine months, or however much was left?...

He was going to hang out at the racetrack. _She_ was the responsible one; let her deal with it.

* * *

When he returned, she was contrite, and he was apologetic, and they both tacitly agreed not to bring the subject up. By a tremendous effort of will, Kyla refrained from mentioning the lipstick again. It didn't stop plaguing her, though. And since they went out of their way to be nice to each other for the next four days, and not mention anything that would upset the other-- like the baby-- there was no other conflict to take her mind off it. She grew more and more convinced Jay was cheating on her, probably at his precious racetrack. So one day, she called in sick from a pay phone after leaving for work, and headed for the reacetrack.

* * *

Jay did not quite know what drew him to the track. He suspected he'd been involved with racing in his former life, it seemed to fit him so well. Of course, he wasn't professional now, if he'd ever been. When he competed now, it was in amateur tournaments that sometimes involved money prizes but more often didn't do anything but show off one's skills.

He was tuning up his race car once again-- after all, it might have been damaged in the drive here-- when he heard a woman's voice behind him, speaking Japanese. "Joe! Joe ne? Joe ja nai no?"

Jay turned, startled. A Japanese girl of about 19 had accosted him. "I don't speak Japanese," he said, although he'd understood perfectly what she'd said. _Aren't you Joe?_ Yet another thing to chalk up to his past-- he'd spoken Japanese once.

"You-- you must be Joe! Joe, don't you remember me? It's Jun!" She switched into English and grabbed his arms.

"Uh-- no, I don't--" He tried to extricate himself. 

A poisonously sweet voice from behind inquired, "Is this one of your female 'racing partners', Jay?" Jay turned, heart sinking. Kyla stood behind him in full bitch mode-- drawn up to her full considerable height, blonde hair pulled into a bun, catching fire in the bright sunlight. He heard the woman clutching his shoulders gasp.

"Anta wa..." The girl stepped back from Jay, as he automatically translated. _You!_

Kyla stepped forward and rested a possessive hand on Jay'sshoulder, smiling like a cat. "I see he neglected to tell you he had a wife. Don't look so shocked, little girl-- did you truly think _you_ could claim him?"

"Wife?.." The words sounded as if the girl's tongue was numb. "You're his _wife_?"

"For the past year and a half," Jay interjected, trying to save the situation. "Kyla, it's not what you think. She just came up and grabbed me-- she thinks I'm some guy named Joe."

"But you are! Aren't you? Joe, it's me!"

Kyla frowned at the girl. "Who's Joe? Your boyfriend, perhaps?"

"No, my-- my friend. My foster brother. You-- are you _sure_ you're not Joe? You look so much like him..."

"No, I'm not sure..." Jay muttered. "Why do you think I'm him?"

"He disappeared two years ago. We-- we thought he was dead, but... you look like him, you sound like him.. and he was a racer, too."

"Two years ago.." Jay turned to Kyla. "Ky, it's possible. That's when Dr. Kymel saved us. This girl might know who I was!"

"But what about me?" Kyla asked. "If we were lovers before, shouldn't she know about me, too?"

"Lovers..." the girl whispered disbelievingly. Jay turned back to her.

"Look. You might be right. Two years ago Kyla and I both nearly died, and we lost our memories. I could be your friend Joe, maybe. But Kyla and I were lovers before the accident. You don't recognize her, too?"

"How do you know you were lovers if you don't remember?"

It was Kyla who answered, one arm twined around Jay's. "The doctor who saved us found us dying in each other's arms. We were obviously not total strangers."

"I... see." The girl looked like she either didn't believe it, or she didn't want to. "Anyway, my name's Jun. Would you, uh.. be willing to go with me to see the rest of the family? They all throught you-- uh, Joe-- was dead, and they'd be thrilled to see you, even if you don't remember..."

"You didn't answer Jay's question," Kyla said.

"What-- do I recognize you? No, I don't. But Joe had a lot of girlfriends." She was a lousy liar. Even Jay could tell that Jun thought she knew who Kyla was, and didn't like it. For Kyla, who was somewhat paranoid and an expert on lies, it must be clear as day.

"Hey. Don't lie to us. Kyla _does_ remind you of someone. Who?"

Jun swallowed. "Okay... but she can't be who she looks like. You say you've been married a year and a half?"

"Yeah."

"The person she reminds me of... well, you wouldn't have stayed married for a year and a half. So I don't really recognize your wife. It's just she reminds me of someone she can't _possibly_ be." 

"Why can't I?" Kyla asked.

"Have you killed anyone lately?"

Kyla flushed with rage. "_No_!" Jay knew why she was so furious-- Kyla was pacifistic to the point where she was squeamish about killing bugs. "What do you mean by asking me a thing like that?"

"The person I'm thinking of was an insane killer. You're not. And Joe hated... her."

"Oh." Kyla sounded slightly mollified. "I suppose I'm something of a type. anyway. I've seen a million European models who look like me."

"Mm." Jun nodded her head quickly. "Anyway, will the two of you come with me?"

Kyla and Jay looked at each other. "I really want to know," he said in a low voice.

"All right," Kyla said. She turned, automatically speaking for the two of them. "We'll go with you." 


	3. Chapter 2

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Aite Chp. 2

Jun's car was in the parking lot. Jay drove around and waited for her, and she pulled out, followed by Kyla. Jay followed them both, wishing Kyla would ride with him-- but she couldn't risk the car being stolen while she was gone, after all. Safer to take it with them. 

His heart pounded and his mouth was dry, racked with nerves. He was going to learn about his past, meet people who'd been his best friends once. There was no doubt in his mind now that he had been Joe-- he remembered nothing, but the girl had sounded so sure, and the chances that he was the exact doppelganger of a racer who'd died around the same time he'd had the accident were far too slim to take seriously. That meant he could recover his past, his former life...

...the question was, would he want to? After all, they didn't know Kyla... or if they did, it was as someone they didn't like. He _wasn't_ going to give her up for them.

But if they were the sort of people he could be friends with as he was now, they wouldn't make him.

* * *

In her car, leading the two back to base, Jun lifted her bracelet to her lips. "Jun, calling Ken." Galactor wasn't active and this wasn't official Science Ninja business, so she didn't bother with code names.

"Ken here. What is it, Jun?"

"Get the team together, Ken, and get ready for a shock. I think I've found Joe! He's on his way with me." Even knowing the difficulties ahead of them, she couldn't keep the excitement out of her voice.

"_What_? You found Joe? He's _alive_? _How_??"

"I don't know... but that's not the only shock. I found him at the racetrack. He's got amnesia and he thinks his name is Jay Samonetti. But he says, two years ago some doctor saved him from dying-- he doesn't know the details. But there's a problem, and I'm not sure what to think about it. First, he's married."

"Married? _Joe_?"

"It gets worse, Ken! The woman he's married to, according to both of them, nearly died at the same time he did--"

"Oh my God."

So Ken had not missed the meaning in that. "Right. And they think they were lovers in the past-- she's amnesiac too-- because the doctor who saved them.... found them dying in each other's arms..."

"All that blood..." Ken whispered. "Does she-- look like--"

"_Dead_ ringer, Ken."

There was silence for a few seconds. "Sonna baka na..." Ken finally whispered.

"But I don't understand, because they've been married a year and a half! I mean, Joe-- or Jay-- would have figured it out, don't you think? The profile _was_ every year, wasn't it? And even if she is, her personality's totally different. When I asked if she'd killed anyone lately--"

"You _didn't_!"

"They were suspicious! It was all over my face-- I had to explain who I thought Kyla was, and that she couldn't really be, even though I think she is-- so I asked, and she nearly took off my head. Like anyone else would, if they were accused of murder."

"Maybe she was mimicking what humans act like."

"I don't think so-- I really think she's got amnesia. She accused _me_ of being Jay's lover, but when she found out I wasn't, she didn't seem at all suspicious or afraid of me, and that doesn't fit the profile either...."

"All right." She heard Ken take a deep breath. "We'll meet at ISO HQ. I'll call Dr. Nambu and the others, and I'll warn them ahead of time... who she might be."

"I understand," Jun said fervently. "All right, I'll meet you there."

* * *

The three cars drove down a tunnel into a vast parking garage, which was attached to an even vaster skyscraper. From the garage, they took an elevator that moved them sideways some distance before going up. Kyla stared around herself, wide-eyed, one hand resting on Jay's arm for security. "Does any of this look familiar?" she whispered to

him.

"Uhn-uhn." He shook his head.

"This is the main ISO headquarters," Jun said chattily, like a tour guide, but Kyla could hear she was straining for the nonchalance. "Dr. Nambu-- he's our mentor-- has an office up on the 42nd floor. There are 123 floors, all told."

"Good God," Jay said. "You guys don't believe in doing anything halfway, do you?"

"No," Jun said, grinning, "I guess we don't." The doors slid open. "This is the 42nd floor. Dr. Nambu's office is around the corner."

The people walking past all smiled and nodded at Jun, or stared at Jay-- none paid any attention to Kyla. They were mostly wearing technicians' uniforms, although some were in lab coats. The antiseptic smell of the place, the bright fluorescent lights, the linoleum, all reminded Kyla of the hospital that haunted her nightmares, and she

moved closer to Jay. He was looking around, interested, but not intimidated-- only she was intimidated. _This is ridiculous!_ Kyla thought. _I have nothing to be afraid of._

Then they entered a large room, more like a lounge than an office, with four males inside it. The oldest, a 40ish Japanese man with glasses and hair that was too thick, too brown, to look quite real on his middle-aged face, was standing directly by the door. Three youths in T-shirts and jeans were sitting on or propped against sofas. One was an attractive young man, college age or so, with fluffy brown hair and big blue eyes. Another was a fat, somewhat unkempt Japanese youth, and the last was a boy of about 12 with a bad overbite and messy hair. Kyla saw all of them look at Jay with radiant expressions of recognition and joy, and knew that, whatever else, he _had_ to be their long-lost foster brother. There was no doubt about that. Tentatively she, too, smiled at their happiness.

Then they looked at her, and their expressions changed. Her own smile fled-- there was recognition in those eyes, all right, but recognition tinged with horror. Unhealthy curiosity, staring at her as if she were a monster. A freak. A creature. The staring, horrified eyes resonated with something inside her, and she clung to Jay, terrified, her nails digging into his flesh.

"Kyla, not so hard!" he muttered at her. "There's nothing to be afraid of!"

The four's expressions had changed again-- they were looking at Jay again, with no sign that they'd stared at Kyla. "Joe!" the blue-eyed man said, and suddenly the three of them were on top of him, the small boy hugging his legs, the fat man pounding him on the back. "Joe n'aniki!" "Joe daa wa! Honto de Joe daa wa!"

"Wait a minute," Jay said, looking bemused but happy. "Do you guys speak English? Or Italian? I don't speak Japanese."

"Hei? Itsu kara, sono hanashi da?" the little boy demanded. Kyla understood without understanding how-- he meant "Huh? Since when was this?"

"You don't?" the blue-eyed man said, in accented but good English. "Joe spoke perfect Japanese..."

"Sore wa honto nara.." Jun said-- If that's true...

"Uh-- well... to tell the truth, I do understand you, a couple of seconds after you say it. But I haven't got the foggiest idea how to talk in Japanese myself," Jay said. "I guess I must have forgotten that, too." He took a deep breath. "Anyway. You know me, I guess-- I figure I _must_ be Joe, if you all recognize me. But I don't remember it. So I don't recognize any of you-- sorry..."

Jun said quickly, "This is Ken--" the blue-eyed man-- "Ryu--" the fat one-- "and Jinpei--" the little boy. "And this is Dr. Nambu," she added, somewhat unnecessarily, nodding to the man in glasses. 

"Okay," Jay said, nodding. "I'm-- well, since I lost my memory I've been calling myself Jay Samonetti. Though if you really want to call me Joe, I guess I could get used to it. And this is my wife, Kyla."

Kyla wished fervently he hadn't mentioned her-- the eyes were back again. Just a flicker, but a flicker full of fear and loathing, it seemed to her. _Why am I so afraid?_ she asked herself. _Am I a child, to cringe back against Jay because they hate me? If they want to be my enemy, they're damn well in for a fight!_ She smiled poisonously at

them. "You _will_ be sure and tell us how Jay managed to lose his memory in the first place without you knowing about it, if you were such good friends," she said sweetly.

"We thought he was dead--" Jinpei started hotly.

"Maa, Jinpei. Sonna tsuyoi kotoba wa hitsuyo nai," Ken said-- hold it, Jinpei, you don't need to get so hot about it. His eyes, when they met Kyla's, were open and friendly-- studiedly open and friendly. Did they think she couldn't recognize a facade when she saw one? "We'll tell both of you all about it," he said, "but first we'd like

to know your side of the story. For instance, Jun says you've been married two years?"

"A year and a half," Kyla said. "We've known each other two years."

"And you've been together all that time?"

"Hey," Jay said, apparently picking up for the first time some of the tension Kyla had been sensing. "Don't hassle my wife."

"I'm not hassling her, I'm just curious. The Joe I remember had a dozen women on a string-- he wasn't the type to settle down with anyone. I imagine that's changed, na?"

Kyla glared at him. Mention of infidelity and Jay in the same sentence hit too close to the bone to tolerate a total stranger saying it. "Yeah," Jay said dangerously, "it's changed. I wouldn't've married Ky if I didn't plan on settling down."

"I think what Ken's trying to say," Jun said, almost desperately, "is that in a lot of respects, you're probably different from the Joe we remember. But in other respects, you're probably the same. So he's just trying to sort one from the other."

"Ah." Jay nodded. "Well, I guess I'll tell you what I remember, then, and then you can tell us what you know."

"Yeah, that would be great," Ryu said earnestly. His English was _very_ badly accented. "It's great to have you back with us, Joe."

Nambu spoke for the first time. "Why don't we all sit down?" His English had a distinct British accent to it. 

Jay plunked himself down on the nearest sofa, but Kyla was too nervous to sit-- she stood behind the sofa, one hand resting on it. Then she realized that it made her too obvious, too visible.

"Won't you sit down, Mrs. Samonetti?" Nambu asked cordially. There was no trace of the dislike of her she felt radiating from the others in his voice. She sat down next to Jay, crossed her legs tightly, folded her arms and leaned forward, sitting at the edge of the seat.

"You want to tell the story, Ky? You're better with words," Jay said.

"No, you tell it." She wanted to be as unnoticeable as possible around these people.

"Okay." Jay leaned back and put his hands behind his head. "About two years ago, I woke up in a hospital bed, and I couldn't remember who I was or how I got there. Kyla was lying on the bed next to mine. In between the beds there was this doctor lady, standing there. She said, her name was Dr. Kymel--" Kyla, whose eyes were roving

constantly over the other people's faces, looking for signs of the hatred again, saw Nambu's eyes widen in shock-- "and I was Jay, and she was Kyla. We made up the last name Samonetti when we decided to get married-- we didn't have last names before then. But anyway, she said we'd been in an accident that had practically killed us. She found us dying in each other's arms. It took a few months to fix us up, and we lost our memories in the meantime, but it didn't really seem to bother us at first."

"We had each other," Kyla interjected. "Whatever happened before was unimportant."

"Yeah. So Dr. Kymel did aptitude tests on us, to find out what we did best and what we liked to do. Turned out, I like to save other people from dangerous situations, so I became a fireman, and Kyla likes to lie to people--"

"I do not lie to people!"

"She works for a PR agency. Makes corrupt politicians look good," Jay explained. Kyla was furious. How dare he belittle what she did, make her look bad, in front of these people who hated her! So she smiled again, the same sweet, poisonous, dangerous smile, and said, "Jay can't imagine why anyone would ever do a job that takes brains."

"Oh, I get it. Morons with an IQ of 3 can pass all the tests to be firefighters, is that it?"

The others looked distinctly uncomfortable. Nambu held up his hands. "Let's not have an argument now. I'm sure both of you are quite skilled at your professions."

"It's not Kyla's skill I'm worried about, it's how useful her job is--"

"I make four or five times your salary, Jay, so shut up!"

"Anyway. We got married a few months after we woke up, and we've been living near Dr. Kymel all this time. She has a son who's probably a year or two younger than me, David--" Nambu nodded, as if he expected to hear that-- "and he helps us out taking care of the house and stuff. And now Kyla's pregnant." He grinned with all the pride of

a father-to-be-- he had apparently adjusted to the notion, since he wasn't going to be the one who would have to go through the pain of the birth. Kyla's face burned. Why did he have to tell them that? It was private business!

"Pregnant?" Ken said, sounding shocked. The others all stared. Jay, oblivious to the horror and disbelief Kyla saw in them, nodded.

"We just found out a few days ago. It was tough, at first-- we never expected to be parents-- but we got used to it." _Maybe you got used to it,_ Kyla thought.

"What's the baby going to be?" Jinpei asked, leaning forward.

Kyla was confused. "A _baby_. What else would it be?"

"But-- will it be a boy or a girl?"

"Now how would she know that, Jinpei?" Jun asked. "It's too early!"

"Besides," Ryu muttered, and then fell silent. Kyla's fears magnified the word. _Besides what??_

"So that's our story," Jay said. "You going to tell us who we used to be?"

Nambu interjected, "Joe, we know everything about _your_ past. Unfortunately, we don't recognize Kyla at all. It's not impossible that you were lovers, but if so, you never told us." _Liar,_ Kyla thought, cold chills going down her back. _You all used to know me and you hate me. Why? What did I do?_

Why do you look at me like I'm a monster?

"I thought you said I was really close to you people."

"You mean you've all of a sudden become an open, talkative guy who tells his close friends everything?" Ken said, grinning. "That _would_ be a change. You were my best friend, but getting you to talk about your personal life used to be like pulling teeth." Kyla had to admit he had a point there. Jay was not terribly open, even with her.

"Since the war with Galactor ended shortly after the two of you lost your memories," Nambu said, "no doubt you don't remember it personally. But you have heard of Galactor, haven't you?"

Jay shrugged. "Don't ask me-- I don't keep up with recent current events, let alone old current events."

"I read about them," Kyla said. Nambu did not seem to hate her quite as much as the others-- perhaps he was just better at hiding it, but she felt slightly more comfortable with him. "They were some kind of world-wide terrorist organization. I remember feeling that we were so lucky they'd been gotten rid of, because they killed something like 50 million people, didn't they? And in only three and a half years. It must have been horrible, living when they were around, never knowing when your life might be smashed..." She shuddered slightly. "I'm glad I don't remember it."

Surprise, calculation, narrow-eyed disbelief from the eyes around her. Nambu raised an eyebrow. "You seem to feel rather strongly on the subject."

"I feel rather strongly on the subjects of the Holocaust and the Salem witch trials, too, but they didn't happen in my lifetime. Sometimes... I wonder if maybe it wasn't Galactor that nearly killed Jay and me..."

"You never told me that," Jay said.

"Think about it. Dr. Kymel never said exactly what did happen, but the Galactor terrorists were killing something like a million people each month-- it could easily have happened to us."

"You're absolutly right," Nambu said, nodding. "As I said, we don't know who you were, but we know that Joe died-- or almost did-- at Galactor's hands, and if you were found together, it makes sense that you might have been a victim of Galactor as well. Let me tell you about Joe, and about the Science Ninja Team."

"Hakase!" Ken said, very fast. "Daijobu desu ka, ano hito o shiraseru koto--"

"Ee, soo to omou." Jay looked blank-- the exchange had probably been too fast for him-- but Kyla had a talent for languages. She pieced it together as "Doctor, is it all right to tell that person?" and "Yes, I think so." Immediately she decided she was "ano hito", that person. Ken didn't want her to know the secret?

"Ken was wondering if I should tell you this," Nambu said in English, "since theoretically you are both security risks. But I think you deserve to know. Kyla, in your researches did you come across mention of the Science Ninja Team?"

Kyla frowned. "The name sounds vaguely familiar."

"Ken, Jun, Jinpei and Ryu are Gatchaman, the Science Ninja Team. I trained them since childhood to fight Galactor. Until two years ago, Joe was their teammate."

"I--" Jay stared. "_I_ was a fighter?"

"Yes. In some respects, what you're doing now is similar. As you said, you like to save other people from danger, and that's exactly what the Science Ninja Team does. But two years ago, in the final battle with Galactor, you disappeared. We found blood on the snow to match your type, enough blood to indicate that you should be dead. Galactor collapsed, due to the death of its leader around that time, and what was left went into deep hiding. The team searched for your body, but-- obviously-- never found it."

"We hoped you were alive, Joe," Ken said softly. "We hoped it so much, even though we hardly dared dream--"

"But what about Kyla? If I was fighting when the accident happened, what was she doing there?"

"I don't know," Nambu said, shaking his head sadly. "If the only reason to believe you were lovers comes from Teriani finding you in each other's arms, it's possible, I regret to say, that you weren't. Joe, you might have tried to sacrifice your life to save an innocent captive of Galactor, protecting her with your body. I don't mean to

belittle your feelings for each other _now_, but it might have been entirely chance that you were together."

No, no, no! It was all wrong! Fury and grief welled up in Kyla. Jay was all she had-- her only link to the past-- was Nambu trying to say he _wasn't_ a link, they had been total strangers? Dammit, why had Jay ever met that girl? Why did this have to happen?

"Huh. Sounds like something I might do," Jay said pensively. Then he stretched, leaned back, and wrapped an arm around Kyla. "Not that it matters now, though. Ky's my wife-- I don't care how we met. Right, Ky?" He grinned at her, and she forced herself to smile back, weakly. It wasn't Jay's fault. It was these Science Ninja people who were ruining everything.

"In any case," Nambu continued. "I realize that this is a terrible thing to have to ask of you, with a child on the way. But we have seen signs that Galactor is coming back; a new leader appears to have come to power, and has been quietly rebuilding the organization. I realize that you don't consciously remember the training we gave

you; nevertheless, your body should remember, and a refresher course should be all you'd need to regain all your former ability. The Science Ninja Team needs you back, Joe. It would take years to train someone else as well; years we don't have. I'll understand if you say no, but..."

"Say yes, aniki," Jinpei pleaded. "We really need you!"

"No!" Kyla shouted, holding Jay's arm possessively. He wasn't theirs, he was hers, and she'd never let them have him! "Jay won't go off and fight in your war to get killed again! We have a baby on the way, _I_ need him--"

"Kyla, don't try to make my decisions for me!" Jay yelled. "You don't own me. They need me, Ky. Weren't you just talking about how Galactor killed millions of people? You want that to happen again?"

"No-- but why do _you_ have to fight? It's not your battle anymore!"

"The _world_ needs me--"

"To hell with the world, _I_ need you!"

"And who the hell are you? You're one woman, Kyla. One woman, balanced against a fucking _planet_? Besides. Kyla, I _want_ to do this. I feel like-- hell, if we found _your_ best friends, your foster family, wouldn't you want to hook up with them? And I've always wanted my life to have meaning. To save people-- hell, they're talking about saving the _world_! I've got to do this."

Kyla's lips tightened. She wasn't going to give up so easily, but she wasn't going to argue about it, to bare her soul, in front of these people. "We'll discuss it later," she said.

Nambu stood. "You've probably both tired. You had an exhausting day. Why don't we resume this discussion tomorrow?"

"Yes," Kyla said, standing up. "Let's go."

"Now wait a minute! I just got here!"

"Mrs. Samonetti," Nambu said, "If your husband insists on staying and you find it too boring to remain, perhaps you'd prefer to take a tour of the grounds with me? Let them catch up on old history."

She wanted to say no. The idea of leaving Jay here to be with these people, to be turned away from her, terrified her. But she didn't want to be here, either, watching them look at her-- and maybe if she got Nambu alone, she could find out from him why everyone hated her. "All right..."

Jay didn't look at her as she left the room, and she burned with humiliation and anger. Already he was turning against her, and she couldn't stop him...

"If you're worried about provisions for the child," Nambu said as he started down the corridor, "you needn't be. Whether Joe-- Jay-- returns to active duty or not, I'm fully prepared to offer you fulltime day care and complete health coverage for the child. After all Joe did for us, the least I could do is provide for his child."

"That's only one of the things I'm worried about," Kyla said tightly, matching Nambu's long strides with long strides of her own. Her unease burst out of her. "Doctor, why do they all hate me?"

"Hate you?" Nambu raised an eyebrow. "What makes you think that?"

"I saw it in their faces! They look at me like-- like I'm a monster!"

"I think you may be overreacting," Nambu said. "What you see is surprise, and some degree of resentment that they will have to share Joe with you. That's all."

"Jun said I looked like someone else-- a mass murderer!"

"Did she? Well. Now that you mention it, I can see you do bear some slight resemblance to a woman the Science Ninja Team killed, a long time ago, and possibly you remind them of her. But that woman had no morals whatsoever, whereas you demonstrate compassion for the victims of terrorism and revulsion at mass killings. She reveled in

such things. Therefore, I feel it very unlikely that you have anything other than appearance in common with her."

"When did she die?" Kyla's voice was quiet, fearful.

"The last time the Science Ninja Team fought her was two or three months before Joe vanished."

She relaxed slightly. "So there's no way I could be her, then."

Nambu nodded. "I'll talk to the team, and tell them they're making you uncomfortable. But you must understand, Mrs. Samonetti--" 

"Call me Kyla. Mrs. Samonetti sounds like a spaghetti sauce." She would have accepted Ms. Samonetti, but "Mrs." never sounded like it should be part of her name, and there was no polite way to get him to switch from Mrs. to Ms.

"Kyla, then-- Galactor is returning. You were horrified by the death count they brought about, and thankful you didn't have to live through it, weren't you? But soon you _will_ have to live through it. And your husband is one of the only people who can stop Galactor from murdering ten times as many."

"Why _him_? He already did enough!"

"If he himself said that--" they entered an elevator. "--I would accept it. But it's what he wants to do... and Kyla, the reason why him is because he already has the training. He already chose this as his lifework. He doesn't remember making the decision, but it seems he'd make the same one now..."

"I-- I don't _believe_ in fighting." There it was, one of the deep reasons-- not the deepest, but still close to the core of her being, and she had to fight to get the words out. "You're telling me-- my husband has to go off and kill people. I-- killing's disgusting. War is evil. The more you fight, the more they fight back, and it

escalates. I-- I can't stand the thought that my husband would turn into a killer!"

"Galactor started the war, not us," Nambu said grimly. "What alternative do we _have_, but to fight back?"

"You could surrender..."

Nambu gave her a long hard look as they left the elevator. "Do you think that would solve anything? Do you think the Jews who surrendered to the Nazis fared any better than the ones who fought back? Do you think the women who were burned in Salem were helped at all by submitting to be tried?"

"No... I guess not."

"It _is_ an evil, to fight. But when someone else is ruthlessly trying to take away your freedom and happiness, it's necessary. Do you believe in killing in self-defense?"

"I don't know if I could _ever_ kill."

"If Jay's life were at stake? If your child's were?"

The Jay example carried more weight than the child-- Kyla had not yet accepted the growth within her as a human being. "I... suppose."

"That's exactly what we're doing. We must kill, yes, but we do it to protect our own lives and the lives of others. And as much as possible, we prefer to avoid killing. We gather information, infiltrate Galactor with spies, sabotage their data nets, keep their plans from coming to completion... That's one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you."

"Why?"

"No one has said, and no one will say, that you need to stay at home and be a good helpmeet to Joe. Or that you need to go work in an office and be left out of his work. How would you like a job with ISO, in Intelligence?"

"What makes you think I'm qualified?"

"You design images, personas, for people in your work, don't you? And you integrate public opinion-- the raw data-- with your objectives to design plans of action. The work you do sounds very similar to work we do in Intelligence, except that at ISO it's more challenging, because people's lives ride on it. You hate Galactor and all it stands for, but you hate killing as well. Well, Intelligence, in the data analysis and cover design areas at least, is non-violent; you'd never need to harm another person. But you'd be contributing to the defeat of Galactor. What's more, it would give you something in common with Jay-- because, like it or not, Kyla, I'm sure he will end up joining the team again. And have you _ever_ been able to persuade him not to do something he wants?"

"...no."

"That sounds like the Joe I remember," Nambu said, nodding. "But if you, too, are working for ISO against Galactor, his profession would be a bond to draw you together instead of a wedge to push you apart. If you want to share in his life as much as you have been, you must participate in his work... or he'll drift apart from you."

If she joined ISO, would it bring her closer to Jay? On the one hand, she didn't want to have to face the Science Ninja Team and their suspicious eyes again... but she would _have_ to, if they were Jay's friends, anyway. Better to deal with them from a position of strength, with authority they recognized. And if she worked with Jay, as they did, she would have as much in common with him as they did... plus a child, plus sex, plus love, all things he'd damn well _better_ not share with them. So she would have more to offer him, and he would still be hers... and it did sound interesting...

"I'll think about it," she said, but her tone of voice indicated that the decision had been made. She would do it.

* * *

The Science Ninja Team talked with Jay/Joe for several hours, filling him in on his past life. None of it sparked any memory within him-- he had said that the things they said were things he knew himself capable of doing, but he still had no actual memory of the events. The team were disappointed-- when an amnesiac was told about his life, wasn't he supposed to regain his memory? It always worked that way in books and movies... Still, they had Joe back. Sooner or later he would remember. He _had_ to.

Late that night, when Jay and Kyla finally went home, Dr. Nambu held a meeting with the team. "What did you think?"

"It's Joe n'aniki, there's no doubt, it's him!"

"Yes, I know it's Joe, Jinpei," Nambu said patiently. "I meant, what do you think of the circumstances? Will he be able to fit into the team again?"

"I think so," Ken said, nodding enthusiastically. "He got excited when we told him about our work, and he seemed very eager to be our friend again and go back to his old life. There's just one problem..." The enthusiasm left his voice, and he trailed off.

"Yes?" Nambu prompted.

"He's married to Berg Katse!" Ryu blurted, upset.

"Yeah, it's her!" Jinpei said. "Did you see the way she was looking at us?"

"Those cold, hate-filled eyes..." Jun shuddered. "I think she recognizes us from the past, Doctor. She hates us, I'm sure of it."

"If she sabotages our efforts to bring him back to us... and she will. I'm sure of it," Ken said grimly. "He's in love with her-- he has no idea who she really is. How can we fight that, Doctor? And _how_ can he not know she's a _mutant_? They've been together for two years, in, uh..."

"Intimate contact," Jun supplied.

"Yeah. If she had _ever_ been a man, Joe would know about it..."

"Dr. Kymel is very resourceful," Nambu said. "She may have removed Kyla's capacity to become male. I agree with you that Kyla used to be Berg Katse. However, I talked with her privately, and I'd like to point out a few interesting things. Almost the first thing out of her mouth was, 'Why do they hate me so much?', referring to you."

"Us? Hate her?" Ken was bewildered. "We didn't--"

"She was the one glaring at us, Doctor!" Jinpei said defensively. 

"I'm sure that's how it seemed to you. But imagine this. You are an amnesiac, madly in love with a fellow amnesiac. You've forged a bond based on the fact that neither of you has any past. Then old friends of your lover turn up. They don't acknowledge your connection to your beloved, they stare at you, and they are uncomfortable in your presence. Now imagine that you have paranoid tendencies-- what do you think is likely to happen?"

"We... tipped her off, didn't we," Ken said slowly.

"You did more than tip her off. You created her suspicions in the first place." Nambu's expression grew severe. "We are not dealing with a stupid person. This woman was once a mimic, a specialist at understanding the meaning of body language. She doesn't remember her past life-- in fact, she is a pacifist to an extreme, and cannot bear the thought of killing, even in a good cause. But deep inside, the old skills are there, and so is the paranoia. If you are suspicious of her, she sees that suspicion as hatred-- if you stare, she thinks you think of her as a monster, a freak. And do I _need_ to remind you that the fear of being thought a freak was what drove Berg Katse to become what he was in the first place?! You _must_ not dislike her, distrust her, fear her, or she will realize it, and become what you fear her to be! Do I make myself clear? We don't want her becoming Berg Katse again!"

"What if she does?" Jinpei asked. "What do we do then?"

"Then... we will have to kill her. And Jay loves her. You will never be able to convince him that his wife is a terrorist killer-- and if we kill her, we may drive him away forever." Nambu sat down. "I want to do more than simply keep her from becoming your enemy. I've read Katse's journals-- the 280 IQ we heard about was _not_ a fluke. fluke. Katse never understood people well enough to be more than a passable general, and he was always hampered by his own insanity and insecurities-- but had he been in another profession, he would have excelled. He came up through Galactor's Intelligence Department, and if he'd stayed there, we never would have been able to keep our secrets from him as we did. I'm giving Kyla a position in ISO's Intelligence Department-- I want to use that brilliance to _our_ benefit. I want to use a tool forged by Galactor to help destroy Galactor. But I _need_ you four not to awaken her paranoia, or we may lose her, and Jay as well."

"We understand, Doctor," Ken said, nodding. "We won't fail next time we meet her."

"I've told her she has some physical resemblance to a woman you killed, who you last fought about two months before Jay's disappearance. Since that was when we discovered Berg Katse and the woman captain were one, and was the last time we fought Katse in her female form, this is essentially the truth. I said that woman was

dead, so Kyla will not suspect that there's anything more than a slight physical resemblance. I made sure of that. If she brings it up, explain that that's why you were starng, and reassure her that she can't possibly be who she looked to you at first."

"But she _is_," Ryu said stubbornly.

"Is she? Berg Katse was a tormented, lonely, insane mutant of both sexes, with no morals and an incapacity to care for others. Kyla Samonetti is a happily married woman and a sane, productive member of society, a pacifist who passionately hates killing, and is deeply in love with her husband. How can they be the same? Even the body has changed, if Kyla no longer changes sex. Some of the same skills are probably possessed by both, but they're _not_ the same person. Berg Katse is _dead_. Think of Kyla as nothing more than the woman Joe loves, and we'll all be better off."

* * *

Still later that night, Nambu sat in his office, staring into nothing.

Kozaburo Nambu had always been a megagenius, on a level few human beings could hope to reach. He had been such a rapid learner, and enjoyed it so much, that he'd acquired three doctorates in little more time than it took most people to get one, and he'd done it for fun. It would have been easy for him to become isolated, set off from humanity by his mind, unable to relate to people.

What saved him from that was a talent he had for understanding people. His was not the surface understanding of mimicry, like Katse's ability had been; he couldn't mimic a person accurately to save his life, but he could understand that person, and the things that drove them. For instance, it had taken only one conversation with Kyla Samonetti to understand the demons that drove her-- her terror at losing Jay, the nameless fear of being thought a freak, the obsessive love that would destroy whatever came between it and its object, despite the fact that she had obviously been conditioned to be a pacifist-- it was easy to know why she did as she did, easy to understand her.

But sometimes, with some people, the talent failed him. And then he was cast adrift, lost in confusion.

"Teriani, why?" he whispered. "Why didn't you tell me..."

Impossible, that he could be a woman's lover, her husband, share everything with her-- and not know her. Impossible that such a woman could fake her own death to deceive him, and embark on some unknown plan of her own, a plan that involved saving the lives of Condor Joe and Berg Katse and convincing them to fall in love. Impossible-- but Teriani Kymel had done it, and Nambu could not understand why.

Why had Teriani disappeared? The two had mentioned her son-- _his_ son; what of their daughter? Why had she saved Joe's life without telling the team? Why had she wiped his memories-- because she obviously had; it was far too coincidental that he and Katse should both become amnesiac-- and why, _why_ had she encouraged him to fall in love with the person who had been his worst enemy?

If Joe _did_ get his memories back, and realized who Kyla was... it would be a disaster. Hadn't Teriani realized this? Or were the memories locked away permanently? And if so, why? He could understand the motive for making Katse forget, easily enough-- but why Joe?

And did Nambu want to confront her?

He looked down at his desk. It hurt too much-- that she was alive, but hadn't told him; that she had deceived Joe like this, and kept him from his friends and his past. He couldn't understand why she had done it-- _how_ she could have done it, if she was the woman he remembered; and that was an acute pain in and of itself, that he could misjudge someone so badly.

No, he didn't want to confront her-- not yet. He would try to learn more of her and her motives from the two of them, and when the time was right, _then_ he would go to her. But he had too many things to worry about now, what with the rebirth of Galactor... and he didn't want to see her yet, and risk being hurt worse. There was time. He could wait.


	4. Chapter 3

__

Aite Chp. 3 

It was late when Jay and Kyla came home, but neither of them particularly wanted to go to bed. Jay began telling Kyla all about the things the others had said he'd been, while Kyla heated soup in the microwave. He felt electric, galvanized, like he could stay up all night. He also didn't feel much like eating, so he let the soup get cold and talked while Kyla ate. 

Kyla listened impassively as she ate. When she finished, she looked up. "Nambu offered me a position in ISO Intelligence," she said, showing no sign of having paid any attention to Jay. 

He hardly cared. "He did? That's great! I'd rather see you doing that than that public relations shit." 

She looked at him with the soft eyes he so rarely saw in her. "You'd like it if I took the job?" 

"Hell, yes! You'd be good at it, and you'd be doing something worthwhile. Besides," he said, and grinned, "if you're spying for ISO you'll be able to check up on me. I know how you'd love that." 

"Well. I guess it's a good idea, then." 

"Yeah. You feel better about all this, now?" He shoved his soup out of the way, and took her hand, across the table. "You know, Ky, I don't want you to feel like I'm trying to leave you out. I want all this stuff to be a part of my life, but I want you to be a part of my life too. Okay?" 

"It's all right," she said, because she desperately wanted it to be all right. 

"Great!" He stood up, releasing her hand, and vaulted across the table, landing next to her. Kyla had to fight back a smile. Jay was so immature sometimes, but she had to love him for it. "So. You and I've both got new jobs, and I'm going to find my past. Think that calls for a celebration?" He grinned down at her. 

Kyla laughed and stood up. "Jay, you think _anything_ calls for that sort of celebration," she said, and grabbed his head, pulling him to her. Jay's arms went around her, lifting her and swinging her up into his arms. She was no lightweight, but Jay was immensely strong, far moreso than one would expect from looking at him. They kissed deeply, and Kyla's hands began to work their way across Jay's chest, under his shirt. 

Finally Jay broke away. "Better put that on hold till I put you down someplace," he said, somewhat hoarsely. "Don't want to get me distracted enough to drop you or bump into something." 

"Oh, I don't think you will." 

"Overconfident little bitch, aren't you?" 

"_Little_ bitch? I'm an inch taller than you, you Italian bastard, and don't you forget it." 

"Overconfident big bitch, then." 

"Big, tall, beautiful, sexy blonde bitch." 

"Macho, studly Italian bastard." 

The two of them burst out laughing. "Modest, aren't we?" Kyla gasped, leaning her head against Jay's chest. 

"Hey, it's hard to be humble when we're as great as we are." 

Kyla lifted her head. "Well. I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow, and I need to get up early. If I'm to get any sleep at all, you'd better find someplace to put us both down, you macho, studly and humble Italian bastard." 

"There's a table right here..." Jay had his "innocent look" on. "We could even do something interesting with the leftover soup..." 

"The _bed_, idiot! You know how hard that table is?" Kyla put on her best look of mock indignation. 

"I always thought you _liked_ stuff hard..." 

Eventually they did reach the bed. However, despite an early start, Kyla didn't get much sleep at all... 

****

Faces, staring hateful faces mocking her, now they knew what she was, and Jay, standing in the circle with hatred in his eyes-- 

"Kyla!" Jay was shaking her. "Get up and turn off your fucking alarm clock!" 

"You do it," Kyla mumbled. "You're awake." 

Jay lifted her bodily out of bed and plopped her down on the rug, despite her struggling. "There. Now you're awake too." 

He was right, there; the chilly autumn air of the house was something she usually got used to in steps, and being shoved out into it cold turkey had woken her up, all right. But she was shivering almost too badly to move. With a great effort of will, she stood up, fighting a sudden wave of nausea. She shut off the clock's whining, and then threw herself back onto the bed, next to Jay, where she proceeded to imitate the alarm clock at top volume, directly in his ear. There was a brief wrestling match, ending with Kyla having a pillow pressed over her face. Since that was the position she slept in, Kyla grabbed the blankets, curled up and tried to go back to sleep. Jay yanked the pillow away. 

"Ky, you've got to get up! You've got a doctor's appointment!" 

"I feel too sick to get up." 

"You _always_ feel sick in the morning nowadays. Sleeping late won't help." 

"Yes, it will. And it's only Dr. Kymel anyway," Kyla said sleepily. "She can wait; it's not like she's got any patients today." 

"Well, if she hasn't got any patience, you shouldn't make her wait," Jay said, grinning triumphantly. Kyla shot him a dirty look. "Ba-dum-bump." 

"You're not going to let me go back to sleep, are you?" 

"Nope." 

"Damn all morning people to hell." She sat up, yawning. 

"I'm no early bird. I just sleep light." 

"That's good. When we've got a baby crying for 2 AM feedings, you can get up for them." 

"You're the night owl-- you'll already _be_ awake at 2 AM." 

"Like hell. I have a job." 

"You also have an appointment with the Doctor in about an hour from now. Better get up and get cleaned up." 

"If I don't?" 

"I'll toss you in the shower." 

"Oh, you'd shower with me?" 

"With only an hour of time to play with? Don't tempt me, Kyla, or you'll be late." 

Kyla got up, got dressed and showered, and went to her appointment, still irritated from lack of sleep. 

****

"Anything of importance happen lately?" Dr. Kymel asked, as she ran her tests on Kyla. 

Automatically Kyla answered, "Nothing much," then checked herself. The standard answer was no longer applicable. "No, actually something of monumental importance happened. Yesterday, as a matter of fact. Jay's people found him." 

"Jay's _what_?" Dr. Kymel looked up from her scanner momentarily. 

"His people. The people he was with before the accident. It turns out that he was a fighter, in ISO. Now that Galactor's coming back, they want him back." 

"Galactor's coming back?" 

"That's what they said. We talked to Dr. Nambu from ISO-- he used to know Jay." Something flickered across Dr. Kymel's face and was gone before Kyla could identify it. "You know who Dr. Nambu is, right?" 

"It would have been hard to avoid," Dr. Kymel said dryly. "I didn't lose _my_ memories of the war with Galactor." 

"It looked for a second-- when I said the name-- that you'd met him, or something." 

"Well, tell me what you thought of him. And ISO in general. Are you happy Jay's found his people? Is he?" 

"He's thrilled about it." 

"Give me your arm." As Kymel took a blood sample, she continued to speak. "That's part of the question. But how do _you_ feel?" 

"I really don't care much. I'm happy for Jay, I guess." 

"Kyla, you are a wonderful liar, but I know all your tricks. You're upset about it, aren't you?" 

Kyla stared at the far wall for several moments. "They're the ones who're upset, not me." 

"Why?" 

"They don't like me. I don't know why. No, I do know why. Because I look like some Galactor bitch, and because they resent me for being closer to Jay than they are, nowadays." 

"Well. Even the Science Ninja Team are only human, Kyla. Give them some time-- and don't go prejudging them the way they're prejudging you, or you'll never have a chance to get along." 

The doctor wasn't looking at Kyla-- she was concentrating on the machine she'd dumped Kyla's blood into. Kyla narrowed her eyes, staring intently at Dr. Kymel. "I never mentioned the Science Ninja Team." 

Perhaps recognizing the tension in Kyla's voice, Dr. Kymel turned and looked at her. "But it's obvious that they are," she said. "They are, right? Jay's a member of the Science Ninja Team." 

"He _was_ a member of the Science Ninja Team. Did you know that already?" 

"Why would I have?" 

"Then how did you guess it was them?" 

"I said so. It was obvious. A team of fighters, associated with Nambu?" She seemed to think about it for several seconds. "Now that you mention it, I suppose I was jumping to conclusions. He may well have other fighters-- but the most famous ones are the Ninja Team, so I just assumed. Does he remember them?" 

"He says that he knows he _could_ have done the things they say he did, but he still doesn't remember doing them." 

"And what about you? Any memories?" 

"No." Flashes of deja vu, yes, but nothing concrete enough to call a memory. "He told them about the baby!" 

If Dr. Kymel was fazed by the _non sequitur_, she didn't show it. "Why does that upset you? Are you ashamed of the baby?" 

"Ashamed? Not really... but it's _our_ private business! He had no right to tell them!" 

"If he thinks of them as his friends, then perhaps he thinks he has every right. You didn't tell him to keep it a secret, did you?" 

"No..." 

"How do you feel about the baby? Do you still hate the idea so much?" 

Kyla looked down at her stomach. As yet, it was still flat-- the only weight she'd gained so far had been spread all over her body, making her softer and more feminine-looking than she'd been. "Not hate, no. I'm resigned to it. But him-- he's so damned gleeful about it! He's a man-- he doesn't have to..." She lost the train of thought. A sudden clamoring of images flickered through her brain and were gone, like the remnants of a dream thought lost, and she let them flow, trying to capture and analyze them. 

__

"...but I am not a man..." 

"...not a man or a woman either? what then?..." 

"...both is neither..." 

"Kyla?" Dr. Kymel was asking. "Is something wrong?" 

"What?" Kyla looked up. "Oh, nothing. I just-- had a flash of something. I think it might have had something to do with the nightmare I had this morning, and I was trying to catch it, but it's gone now." 

"Most likely better that way," Kymel said. "There's enough pain to deal with in the real world without dealing with nightmares too. Better to forget. I know. Lay back on the table and put your legs in the stirrups." Kyla did so. "Have you given the question of what to do about the baby any more thought?" 

"Nambu offered me a higher-paying job with ISO Intelligence, with child-care benefits." 

"Wonderful! And are you going to take it? Take a deep breath and then exhale slowly, please." 

"Yes." Kyla breathed deeply for the doctor. 

"Well, that solves one problem. I'm afraid Utoland men are far too macho to accept staying home with the baby, even if their wife makes more-- and that goes double for Jay. Thought of any names?" 

"Why bother? Time enough for that when the kid is born. There aren't any I like, I can't go to relatives for names... I don't even know whether the kid is going to be a girl or a boy--" 

"Now how could she know that yet?" 

"Besides..." 

"...not a **boy**/not a **girl**/but just a little **baby**..." 

"...then I'm a boy **and** a girl..." 

"Are you all right, Kyla?" 

Kyla shook her head, to clear it. "I'm fine. Can I close my legs now? This is a ridiculously undignified position." 

"Go ahead." Kymel stepped away. "Then I want you to get on the scale." 

"Yes, I am eating more." 

"Did I complain that you weren't?" Kymel noted down Kyla's weight on an odd- looking pad. "Any noticeable increase in appetite?" 

"You... might say that." Kyla had always been known to eat a great quantity of food, despite which she remained rail-slim. She was now eating almost twice as much as Jay, who was no anorexic by any standards. "How fat am I likely to get?" 

"It's not a question of fat at this point. Your normal ratio of body fat to mass is much lower than a woman's should be, and what's happening now is that you're putting on the extra fat you should actually have. Under normal circumstances, Kyla, you're quite underweight. I would guess you're going to put on something like 32 kilos, and burn all of it off a few weeks after the birth. But that's not too extreme-- you could stand to fit another 7-10 kilos on that frame of yours anyway." 

"Good, because I feel like I'm starving all the time and I hate the idea of getting fat. I liked my weight the way it was." 

"Well, eat whatever you want. One problem you _don't_ have is overconsumption disorders. Your metabolism is fast enough to handle whatever junk you want to feed it." 

"...your metabolism **is** unusually fast... that's why you're hungry all the time..." 

"...there's no excuse for living on junk food! your kind run twice the risk of deficiency disease..." 

"In fact," Kymel was saying, "with teeth as strong as yours and a metabolism so fast, you may be one of the few people in the world for whom sugar is actually good for you." 

"Am I different from ordinary people?" Kyla asked suddenly. "I mean-- with my metabolism being so fast-- is there some way to check, to make sure my child won't be born a freak?" 

Kymel frowned. "What brought that on?" 

"Just something I thought of." 

"Amniocentesis, but I wouldn't do it. Amniocentesis runs a 5% risk of causing birth defects, and in your case it wouldn't do any good-- if your child was likely to have six heads and a tail we still couldn't abort, for reasons of your health. You would only torment yourself for months, knowing you were going to have an abnormal child. It's not likely your child will have any defects, Kyla-- you and Jay are both healthy and strong. Don't worry about it." 

There was something-- Dr. Kymel wasn't being entirely truthful, somehow-- but Kyla was still too tired to ferret it out. "If you say so." 

"Besides, the sonagram shows a perfectly healthy, 15-week fetus. There's no visible defects so far, and no reason to believe there will be any. All right?" She smiled at Kyla, but Kyla had a great deal of experience with plastic smiles, and felt that Kymel's was one. 

Kymel glanced at the blood results. "I want you to start taking two of your pills each day. You're fine, but let's make sure you and the baby stay that way. Come to me when you've only got six pills left, and I'll make you up some more. And above all else, _don't_ go a single day without them, or the results could be catastrophic. All right? Now, why don't you get your clothes on, go home and get some rest." 

There was something-- buried under Kymel's neat cover-ups and Kyla's own amnesia-- but what? 

Kyla dressed and went home, concentrating furiously. But the more she tried to pinpoint the source of her unease, the more vague it became. Finally she just decided to bury herself in a book and forget about it. 

****

Teriani Kymel had a talent for masking herself. It was not enough simply to go emotionless and cold. That in itself could be a significator of emotion being hid within. The best disguise was a mask of a different emotion, and so she had held a facade of friendly concern, allowing as little as possible of the turmoil she felt to reach her face. Now she dropped the first mask, as Kyla drove home, and adopted the second that was second nature, the expressionless, neutral face that felt more natural to her than real feeling would have been. 

She was very, very much afraid. 

Item 1: Jay had been contacted by the Science Ninja Team. Had he told them who she was? Had Kozaburo heard her name? Hearing it, could he do anything but hate her for hiding so long, coward that she was? And what of the Science Ninja Team's reaction to discovering Joe alive-- would they hate the one who had saved his life because she had taken his memories? Regardless of the fact that she'd made him far happier, without his corrosive memories of hate? 

__

Would he regain his memories? There had always been a greater chance that he would, because there was less psychological pressure on him to forget, less need. She had taken that into account, though, and set up a baffle. If he remembered his hatred for Galactor, for Berg Katse, and realized that Katse was his lover-- that sort of conflict could rip his mind apart. As long as that potential existed, he would not remember. Maybe brief, happy fragments of his life with the Science Ninja Team, but nothing charged with hate or anguish. She was sure of that. As long as Kyla was the woman he loved, he _could not_ remember his hatred for Katse. And the only two things that could disrupt that would be a major souring of their relationship, or Kyla changing into a man. The first could never be predicted, of course, but by stepping up the dose of Kyla's drug to two pills a day, she had taken every reasonable precaution against the second. It wouldn't happen. 

So the Jay/Nambu locus proved to have only one danger, that of Kozaburo's reaction to learning she was alive. That would be the lesser of the two worries. 

Item 2: Kyla was regaining her memories. 

Teriani hadn't had to block Kyla as heavily; Berg Katse's psyche was riddled with blocks and baffles anyway, and as a Gemini, her mind was naturally more malleable than a human's. It had been easy to place one final block on all the misery, and give Katse what he/she had not even been able to admit to wanting: a normal life. Perhaps Teriani _should_ have blocked it more tightly, however. Kyla had had some sort of flashback twice during the conversation, both times triggered by references to gender. That was the most fundamental difference; of course, that would surface first. And the sudden concern for her child being a "freak"-- that had probably come from a brief flashback, too. 

Why was it happening? Teriani could think of two reasons: first, that the sight of the Science Ninja Team and Nambu was triggering the dormant memories. That, Teriani found unlikely. She hadn't keyed on much more important significators, such as the word Galactor. The other reason was much more likely: the Science Ninja Team recognized Kyla. In recognizing her (and they would not be subtle enough to avoid her noticing), they would awaken persecution fears, and paranoia. The mind found it far easier to remember things that had originally happened in a certain state when the mind was once more in that state. Things that had happened when Katse was a paranoid psychotic-- most of Katse's life-- would be easier to remember if Kyla was in a state of paranoia. And the psychological pressure on her not to remember would be slowly balanced by the psychological need to understand why she was hated and feared by these people. 

If she remembered-- well, it all depended on how well the conditioning held up, and Teriani could not predict that ahead of time. If Berg Katse's memories returned to Kyla, and the conditioning that would prevent her from sympathizing with them collapsed-- they were all in deep shit, not least of all a Keiraine who had dared to try to rehabiliate a Gemini. Katse reborn would not look kindly on Teriani's attempt to condition her into sanity. Whereas if the memories returned, and the conditioning held-- it would be Kyla who would pay the awful price, remembering crimes no sane mind could bear remembering. 

Item 2 was a far greater fear than Item 1. Somehow Teriani would have to take steps to stop this. But what? She couldn't mindwipe Kyla again; Kyla would forget Jay as well, and that would damage Jay's psyche badly. Could she step forward and tell Kozaburo what she'd done, work with him on a way to hold Kyla's memories at bay? 

Did she have the courage to face Kozaburo at all? Even to save Kyla's sanity? 

It was so easy to see what other people should do. So easy to manipulate, to push or to cleverly pull until people did what was best for them. Teriani Kymel, guardian of others' sanity-- but who guarded her own? Who was there who could see what was best for _her_ to do? Because she couldn't see it; had never been able to see it. Anyone else's life she could read like an open book, but her own was a cipher she had never decoded. 

What could she do? What was best? What would work? 

Why could she never see a way out? 

****

In a thousand little ways, Jay was just like the Joe Ken remembered. The walk, the smile, the little gestures of hands and mouth... but then, there were so many ways in which he wasn't like that Joe at all, and the contrast was jarring. When Ken took him out on the mats to see how much he remembered, for instance, he discovered that Jay's streetfighting skills had lost none of Joe's touch. Fewer of the martial arts remained, probably because he hadn't kept them up; still, it was amazing how much he retained after amnesia. 

And how much was lost. Because he had Joe's moves, all right; but the intensity was gone. The rage, that had been so much a part of Joe that Ken had never even seen it as a separate entity-- that was just gone. Jay had Joe's friendliness, Joe's talent for mischief, Joe's frustration at mistakes and his own body's failures, but none of Joe's anger and hate. Looking at him, as he grinned at a joke Ryu had made or listened to Ken's advice with that "I-know-all-that-now-will-you-get-on-with-it" look on his face, it was easy to forget how much he'd changed. It was more the things that _weren't_ there, rather than the things that were, that kept reminding Ken-- 

--the way he took a reprimand calmly, without any of his "don't-give-me-this- shit" attitude-- 

--the way he looked toward Ken for approval and advice on everything he did-- 

--the way he smiled blankly when everyone else laughed at some shared joke, as if he knew he should find it funny but couldn't remember why-- 

And then there were the other things. Ryu had stepped away from the weights, and jokingly asked Jay to prove how much of the old Joe he still had left in him. Never one to turn down a challenge, Jay had gone over to the weights, and Ryu had dialed them to the maximum Joe had been able to easily handle. Jay lifted them as if they were nothing, and didn't seem to realize that that wasn't normal. Carefully, Ken had tested him on the machine, dialing the weights progressively higher in an effort to discover Jay's upper limit. Jay didn't have one. At least, not one on this weight machine. Not even Ryu could manage the high range; Jay had to exert some effort, but he successfully managed to bench-press even the highest weight. 

Now Joe had always been physically stronger than Ken, which Ken had made up for in greater agility. But he'd never been stronger than Ryu. And this-- the casual ease with which Jay lifted weights that would have made Ryu groan, and his total lack of realization that this was not normal-- bothered Ken deeply. How _had_ he gotten this strong? 

Jay was also faster than Joe had been. Not as obviously as the increase in strength, no. But when they tested his reflexes on a driving simulation, and his speed and accuracy on a shooting gallery, he was three or four points higher than Joe had been. The scaling was from 1-50, so three or four points might be the logical result of training and improvement-- except he hadn't trained. He hadn't shot a gun since getting amnesia, and he'd only recently taken up racing again. Without training, how could he be _better_ than the highest scores he'd gotten when he trained all the time? 

He wasn't going to ask. Not yet. Not until he'd gotten a better handle on this familiar stranger who'd come walking back into all their lives. He needed time to get to know Jay better. So he would train Jay, help him reintegrate into the team, help him regain his memories if he could. But above all, he would watch. Because there was something intensely fishy about all this. He hoped-- he prayed-- that Joe's returning from the dead around the same time as Galactor's revival was a coincidence. But the amnesia-- the marriage to Katse, of all people-- the increased abilities-- well, he didn't want to doubt Jay, and he honestly didn't think anyone who'd ever been Joe could fool him that well. But was it possible that Jay was the unwitting pawn of a Galactor plot? Or worse yet, that Jay was _not_ Joe, but some sort of unholy replica? 

It was Ken's job to be overcautious. He had criticized Nambu for paranoia once, and Nambu had turned out to be in the right. If Berg Katse lived, any sort of deviousness was possible, and Ken intended to be fully on guard. Hopefully, both of them were telling the truth when they said they had amnesia. But if it wasn't true, in either case... well, Ken was prepared for any sort of trap. 

****

"This is where you'll be working," Nambu told Kyla. 

The data room of ISO's Intelligence department looked like any other moderately busy office. People pored over papers or leaned forward, looking at terminals. There were a series of cubbyhole constructions, giving each workstation a feeling of privacy. 

Kyla had turned in her two-week's notice today, and taken half the day off. She would spend the other half here, getting her bearings. For the next two weeks, she had told Nambu she would work half days here, full days there. He had objected-- "A pregnant woman shouldn't have to handle all that work!" 

"What do you expect me to do instead, lie in bed and eat bonbons?" she'd replied. "I pull 12-hour days as a matter of routine, sometimes as much as 16 if I have to. I'd be more stressed by not getting my bearings here as fast as I can." 

So she would be officially employed both at the PR agency and at ISO for two weeks, meaning there would be no delay between her last paycheck at her old job and the first paycheck at the next. Nambu couldn't help but feel it was unhealthy for a pregnant woman to spend so much time working, but she insisted she would be all right, and knowing something about her unique biology, Nambu was not in a position to know for sure whether she was wrong or not. Besides, he felt that the faster he got her settled in, the better. 

Now she stood, looking at the data room, at the printers on the far wall and the two xerox machines. "Looks a lot like our office," she commented. 

"You'll be starting here. If your ability warrants it, you can be moved to a private office to work on the more confidential information." 

Kyla smiled at him. "If my ability and the security checks you're undoubtedly going to do on me warrant it, you mean." 

"That is a factor to consider," Nambu said, with the faintest hint of a smile of his own. 

Kyla looked down at some papers on a desk. "This doesn't look too difficult." 

"I think I need to tell you something about the history and background of Galactor, if you're to make sense of these things," Nambu said. "Come with me." 

They left the noise of the data room and entered one of the side offices, currently unoccupied. "How much do you know about Galactor?" 

"Not much. They were a terrorist organization that killed millions, that's all." 

"Yes, well that part is certainly true. Since we first learned of the existence of Galactor, however, we have suspected there may be something more to it than that. They used technology far more advanced than Earth science. An... expert on such things... warned me that they might have alien backers, some time ago. Now we have reason to believe that their true leader, Sosai X--" 

"I thought you said the leader's name was Katse." 

There was still no recognition, no emphasis, no change in expression at all when she used that name. "Their figurehead leader's name was Katse. The true ruler's name was Sosai-- Commander-- X. We have reason to believe that this being was an alien of some sort. We do know that Katse was bioengineered, and that many other Galactors were cyborgs, a technology ISO has only been able to duplicate very recently." 

"Bioengineered? In what way?" 

Oh, this was dangerous ground. "A number of factors," Nambu hedged. "That's not important. This is what matters. After Katse's death, Galactor went into a period of turmoil. Now you realize, we have always had difficulty getting agents into Galactor. Galactor recruits are not screened carefully, but they are forced to... tests of loyalty and cruelty... that most of the kind of people ISO would hire could not pass." 

"Mohs tests," Kyla said, nodding. 

"Mohs tests? What do you mean?" 

"The Mohs scale is a scale for hardness of objects. I read someplace once about a group who made new recruits do horrible things as a test of 'hardness'." 

"Indeed. In connection with Galactor?" 

"I-- don't remember. But I don't think so. I think it came from a book. Maybe Galactor got it from the same place I did." 

__

No doubt, Nambu thought privately. In fact, the Galactors _had_ called their recruitment tests "Mohs tests". He had known what Mohs ordinarily stood for, but had not seen the connection between the two. Now he knew. "Possibly. Be that as it may, we have occasionally placed a few agents, and what is more, we have numerous agents in places influenced by Galactor. So we learned that Galactor was suffering internal turmoil-- and then, it suddenly collapsed. It fragmented into a thousand little groups. Some of these became criminal gangs, using Galactor technology for theft. Some went deep underground. One, a science group, continued to do work under its director as if nothing had happened, but now the work was more theoretical, less applicable to weaponry. Some disappeared totally. Coincidentally, at the same time as Galactor's breakup, a golden UFO was spotted leaving Earth's atmosphere. 

"Two months ago, the UFO returned, or one very much like it. It crashed into a passenger liner, killing all but 50 out of over a thousand passengers. Since then, there have been numerous disappearances. Over a thousand military men, and 2 dozen scientists, have vanished. Oddly enough, the scientists have all been male." 

"What's strange about that? Most scientists are." 

"True. However, some top-level females were overlooked in favor of lesser-known males in the same field." 

"A terrorist organization's hardly likely to be egalitarian." 

"My point is that, in the past, Galactor _was_. Most of the cannon fodder was male; however, there were several female captains, including one of very high rank; a female assassin squad; and any number of female scientists, including Galactor's Executive Scientist at the time of the breakup." 

"You sound like you don't approve." There was something slightly belligerent in Kyla's tone. "Is there something wrong with that?" 

"Not in itself, I suppose-- but I feel it's symptomatic. When an organization sends women to war, it indicates an eroding of family virtues." 

"There speaks a Utoland man. What about your precious Science Ninja Team? There's a woman there..." 

"Jun's aptitudes were such that she could not be ignored. Besides, she's yet young." What Nambu felt was that most women were less warlike than most men, and that Galactor had, by masculinizing its women, removed all the softer emotion from its structure. He also believed that most women were happier as wives and mothers, and hoped that Jun would live long enough to experience such happiness for herself. But something warned him not to argue such topics with Kyla, who appeared to be very much a feminist. "The important thing to note is that they don't appear to be doing it anymore. 

"Our agents have observed a number of other things that may be related to Galactor's return-- shifts in the flow of illegal drugs, in the power structure of criminal organizations. One agent, codenamed Whisper, has learned far more. Whisper is placed in one of the Galactor sub-groups that went independent. According to this agent, a personage named Gel Sadra has contacted the head of this group about rejoining Galactor. The name Gel Sadra doesn't check with any of our records of known Galactor captains, but it may be a different name, or Sadra may have previously been unaffiliated with Galactor. We do not know Sadra's sex--" 

"Male, I'd presume. Wouldn't you?" 

"If the organization were not Galactor, I would. But the description is ambiguous, and there have been high-ranking female Galactors. In fact, since Sadra may be a tool of Sosai X, it is possible that he or she is in fact hermaphroditic, since X has been known to create such beings through bioengineering." 

"Hermaphroditic?" 

__

Damn. He never should have mentioned it. "Possessing both sexes." 

"I know what the word means. X-- creates people like that? How could they survive in Galactor? A terrorist organization would rip someone they thought was a freak apart!" 

"Galactors wear masks and costumes that may very effectively hide their sex, if required. And Galactor has been known to accept deviants of all categories. Physiological deviants would be only marginally stranger than some of the people Galactor has been known to employ." 

"But-- somebody like that-- they could never have a normal life. Changing from one to the other-- maybe they couldn't have any kind of life, _except_ in Galactor. Is that why X did it? To force these people to serve him?" 

"X's motives are unknowable; it is, however, possible." He had to get her off this topic. Nambu had noticed that Kyla automatically assumed a hermaphrodite would change from one sex to the other; in normal usage, a hermaphrodite would be someone who possessed both organs at all times, and Nambu hadn't said anything to indicate the other. It was her life experience speaking through her, even if she didn't understand that yet. "In any case, at the moment it's irrelevant what sex Sadra is, when we don't know anything else about him or her. The information we're currently collecting is an attempt to locate Galactor bases, learn their strength, and discover any possible targets they may have. Second to that, we want to know more about Gel Sadra and the possible connection with Sosai X. Let me show you back to the data room..." 

****

As Kyla studied the work she was to be doing, she felt a strong sense of deja vu, stronger than any before. She had done this kind of work before-- she knew it. Already she was looking forward to quitting the PR agency and working against Galactor here. 

And yet-- 

Something had disturbed her greatly, in Nambu's history of Galactor, and she'd pinned down what it was. He hadn't talked about it much, but... 

Kyla had come into existence with an egalitarian mind. As far as she could remember, which admittedly wasn't that far, she had taken as a first principle the notion that all people were fundamentally alike. Race, religion and nationality, sex and sex preference-- these things just _didn't matter_. She also knew, as a fundamental principle, that most people didn't agree. At least the Americans paid extensive lip service to equality, and some of them even believed it, which made Kyla wonder sometimes if she might have been American instead of the European she believed herself to be after all. Other countries-- the nations of Europe, Asia, Africa, places such as Utoland-- were ready and willing to discriminate freely, and frequently on the basis of sex. There were women who made it to the top, and Kyla was one of them, or intended to be. But many, many more were relegated to supporting roles for life. Even Nambu, as egalitarian a man as he seemed to be, seemed to be bothered by Galactor's sexual equality and "acceptance of deviance". 

Up until now, Kyla had thought of all Galactors as basically animal scum, with no sympathy at all. But then Nambu had given his talk. He had only briefly mentioned hermaphroditic beings X had created, but the notion had instantly captured her sympathy to a disturbing degree. In this world, where to be female was to be a second-class citizen, and to be bisexual or homosexual was to be a deviant, how could a hermaphrodite survive? The awful loneliness such a being must endure came to her mind so clearly, it was almost as if she had imagined it before... or else... 

"...not a man or a woman either? what then..." 

"...how can she know what it's going to be?" 

"besides..." 

"...not a boy or a girl, so you're neither..." 

No. _No_. She shoved the cascade of chilling, half-remembered resonances away. She sympathized with the poor hermaphrodites, with no choice but to enter Galactor if they wanted to find acceptance, only because the loneliness they must have felt was similar to the loneliness she must have felt once, the loneliness that lurked under her love for Jay and made her so desperately afraid of losing him. Only because their struggle for acceptance would mirror, on a larger scale, her struggle to be accepted by a male- dominated world, sometime in the past. There was no connection. There could be no other connection. 

She forced herself to concentrate on her work, and no longer remember the things that disturbed her... 


	5. Chapter 4

__

Aite Chp. 4

The battle simulator used robots, programmed to behave mostly like Galactors did. Since Galactors were very predictable, the simulation was quite accurate. Several robots held up paint-pellet guns in quasi-unison. Ken flung his new weapon, the cutting saucer, and knocked several of the guns out of robot hands, while Jay flung half a dozen shuriken into the pressure points on the robots' foam exteriors. Behind them, Jun, Jinpei, and Ryu were dealing with robots of their own. 

Ken and Jay charged into the ranks of the mostly-disarmed robots. Most martial arts moves still worked on the robots, who were programmed to respond to strikes as if they were people. Throwing disciplines, however, were frequently skewed badly by the weight of the robots. Ken and the others usually practiced throws on each other or highly paid sparring partners. Jay, however, was picking up the robots and throwing them as if they weighed as much as real Galactors. Ken noticed him doing this, and a chill went down his back. In the month Jay had been training with them, he'd seen Jay use superhuman strength several times, and it never failed to spook him, though he hadn't yet decided to ask Jay about it. Where _had_ the extra strength come from? And was it safe to ask Jay?

After they had dealt with all the robots, some more came charging at them, armed with the spiked shields Galactors had carried in the past. Of course, the "spikes" here were rubber and collapsible, and covered with blue dye that would rub off if the spikes touched a Science Ninja. Ken and Jay leapt up, and the robots "impaled" each other with the spikes.

Ken glanced about to check on the others. They had finished off their first wave of robots, and were waiting to see if there would be a second. All five of them were doing pretty well. Only Jinpei and Jay had been hit by any "bullets", and the paint marks were in the regions where the bullets would have bounced off anyway, had they been real. Ken decided to call for a break.

Jay leaned against the wall. "So what do you think?"

"About what?" Ken asked, as the others walked over to join them.

"Think I can hack the real thing?"

"Oh, _I_ think so," Jun put in. "Don't you, Ken? I think he did almost as well as he used to."

"There's no doubt you can handle it," Ken said to Jay. "It's just..." Well, what the hell. It had to be asked eventually. "Where did you get so strong?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean those things are robots. They're heavy. You didn't used to be able to pick them up and throw them into walls."

Jay frowned. "They didn't seem all that heavy to me... You sure they're not just lighter robots?"

"Well, _I_ can't pick'em up," Ryu said. "They're heavy, all right."

"That's _weird_," Jay said, a puzzled look on his face. "They felt so light. I don't get it."

"Maybe Dr. Nambu should examine you?"

"I'll just ask Dr. Kymel. She's done enough med tests on me, she ought to know everything there is to know about me. Maybe it's something she did." That made sense, but Ken wasn't sure he liked the implications of it. He knew nothing about this Kymel woman, but anyone who would resurrect Berg Katse... or influence an amnesiac Joe to fall in love with Katse... "You think it's going to be a problem?" Jay was asking.

"Not a problem," Ken said, thinking, _Not in itself_. "If you're much stronger than before, I can't imagine but that it'll help us. I just want to know _why_."

"So do I," Jay muttered, staring at his hands.

Jinpei said, "Are we quitting for the day, ani-ki?" Ken glanced at him. Kids had such uncomplicated lives, he thought. Jinpei didn't care where Jay got the extra strength, or the motive of the person who gave it to him-- as far as he was concerned, if it wasn't a problem then it didn't matter. 

"No. I want to practice a Cross Fight manuever, and then we're going to do a mission simulation." Ken looked around. "Everyone feel up to that?"

"Uh..." Jay looked embarrassed. "What _is_ a Cross Fight manuever?"

"We're about to show you. Places, people-- we'll do one run without Jay to show him what it looks like, then we'll do a training run for him, then a real practice with him in it."

* * *

Kyla Samonetti had already acquired a reputation in the month she'd been working for ISO Intelligence. Her native intelligence, willingness to work hard and talent for analysis and synthesis had impressed most of her immediate superiors, and they'd bumped her up two security clearance levels so she could work on the most recent and vital information they were getting. She still didn't have clearance for historical Galactor information, but then, she saw no particular reason why she'd need such a thing.

Her coworkers were less than impressed with her as a human being. She was arrogant as hell, with an "I-did-it-therefore-it's-right" attitude. She was a perfectionist, demanding the best from herself and seeing nothing wrong with demanding the best from other people. She got _very_ defensive when anyone criticized her, and if it actually turned out to be her mistake, she usually managed to blame it on someone or something else. And she had little warmth in her dealings with others-- she was efficient, polite and friendly in a very superficial way. She got angry, or at least annoyed, very easily, and her moods swung rapidly.

On the other hand, no one could fail to be impressed with her ability. She had total recall, able to remember every detail of every report she read, as well as a genius for synthesis. Her predictions were usually more accurate than either the computers' or her coworkers'. And she was able to quickly extrapolate a larger picture out of scattered fragments of data. In just a month, she had taken the bits and pieces of information they'd gathered on Galactor and constructed a vivid picture.

Gel Sadra was female, or claimed to be, at least. She had come out of nowhere, claiming to speak with Sosai X's authority, and had gone to all the private little organizations left when Galactor fragmented, demanding to see their leaders. Some of them had refused to see her. She had had their bases destroyed and them and their men killed. Those she saw were invited to rejoin Galactor. If they wouldn't, she killed them and placed a captain of her choosing in their place. Several attempts had been made on her life, and all had failed miserably. She was reputed to be far more cruel than even Berg Katse had been, and had been known to kill men because they were ugly, they didn't bow to her fast enough, they accidentally used a male form of address to her, or she just felt like it. Rumor had it that she didn't like women, and wouldn't give them positions of any authority, the one exception being Galactor's Executive Scientist Selina Marriochio. Gel Sadra had apparently _not_ been a member of Galactor previously, having been specially chosen by Sosai X to act as his agent. She also brought with her a quantum jump in the technology levels.

Over the past two years, discoveries ISO had made and principles Galactor used that ISO had deciphered had penetrated society, bringing the technology level of the entire planet up. The Mantle Project had been completed, and experimental cities were being built using geothermal power. And ISO had upgraded the technology of its weaponry, too. Now Galactor had also jumped, maintaining the old imbalance. Kyla was worried. Jay had hardly gotten a handle on what Galactor _used_ to be like-- could he deal with a new, tougher Galactor?

She was utterly dedicated to her work, putting in 10-12 hour days and coming in on weekends regularly, for three reasons. The first was the importance of what she was doing. The information she synthesized might save lives. The second was that she wanted to ensure Jay's safety, as much as she possibly could, and the more he and the others knew about Galactor the better off they'd be. And the third reason was that Jay was doing the same thing, devoting himself wholly to training, and the loneliness was too much for her. She had to keep busy. They hardly ever saw each other lately, and if Kyla did not keep herself occupied it would gnaw at her. Was this supposed to bring them closer together? _How_?

One day she decided she was sick of this. Jay was always off with his friends in the high-security Gatchaman training area, and she didn't have clearance to go in. She never saw him, she never shared any part of his world. When she _did_ see him, he wouldn't talk about his work, and they were both usually too tired to do anything but sleep. Kyla decided she was going to find his training area and sneak in to see him. She had never been one to take rules very seriously-- the only important consideration was not getting caught. So she carefully planned her route. The plan to the air vent system had to be available to maintenance, who had lower security clearance than she did, and so she was able to punch up a readout on it. She was a bit plumper than she had been four months ago, but she was still quite thin, and perfectly capable of fitting into the service ducts for the air vent system. She could get access to the service ducts from any number of places she _was_ cleared to enter, and through a complicated routing she could crawl through the vents to what had to be the Science Ninja Team's training room. The lack of security that implied bothered her for a few moments-- if she could do it, anyone could do it, and what did that say about Jay's safety?-- but she soon realized that there were electronic sensors everywhere. A person could get through, but not with a camera or a weapon. 

She carried a leotard and stockings to work in her bag, and changed on overtime, after most of everyone else had left. She bound her hair into a knot at the nape of her neck, and then she crawled into the service ducts, and an hour later had reached a vent directly above the training room. It was more secure than she'd thought. The grating beneath her had too narrow a mesh to fire a pistol through, and it was impossible to contort one's body at the proper angle to do so anyway. Also, it was not a convenient way to sneak into the room unless one was already a Science Ninja-- there was a pipe 10 feet below the vent, and then there was a 40-foot drop from the pipe to the floor. So she twisted her body to look down through the vent, and caught her breath.

The five people down there were familiar somehow. Obviously, she knew them, but it was more than that. She had never seen them in costume before, and yet she had, and they frightened her. On some subconscious level those bird suits and the people in them terrified her-- even Jay. And that disturbed her. What had she been, that she looked at them with fear?

__

image: running down a hall look behind there in the white it's ken

She shook her head, clearing it of the image before it could come into focus in her mind. She didn't want to see it, whatever it was. She had been trying to suppress the flashbacks-- she had no desire to remember her past. Kyla watched the five of them, trying to ignore her irrational sense of fear. That was Jay, there in the blue and black, not some murderous demon as something kept trying to tell her he was. And in the white and blue was Ken, who didn't like her, and she was very afraid of him. What if he caught her in here? What would he do to her?

__

He won't do anything! You're Jay's wife-- you have every right to be here, stupid, she told herself. _There's nothing to be afraid of-- don't be irrational!_ And as she watched, her nameless dread slowly abated. They were beautiful. She'd never have called Ryu or Jinpei graceful, and yet, they were unmistakably so here. And the other three were poetry in motion. She watched Jay intently, how effortlessly he followed the others' moves, and something inside her hurt even as she drank in his beauty. _This is his world, and I can never be part of it..._

* * *

For some time, Ken had been feeling uneasy. He had the unshakable sensation of being watched, but couldn't find anyone watching him. Jay hadn't felt it-- perhaps his memory loss had dulled his sensitivities-- and Ryu hadn't, either, but that was par for the course. Both Jun and Jinpei agreed with Ken-- they each felt themselves being watched, and not by monitor screen, either. Someone close by.

They all tried to ignore it for a while, and go on with training as usual. After all, there _was_ no one to be seen, and there was no cover in the vast gym where a spy could hide. But then, in evading a mechanical menace, Ken leapt up onto a pipe under the air vent-- and looked up. There _was_ someone watching, hiding in the air vent!

He took the new laser he'd been given and drew three lines in rapid succession, slicing the grating free of the ceiling. Then he leapt, as the grating started to fall with a woman's scream, and grabbed the spy as she fell through. He landed on the floor, heavily burdened with the woman, and pinned her underneath him, prepared to beat the living daylights out of her if she resisted.

"Jay!" the woman screamed, and horrified, Ken recognized her, seeing her clearly for the first time. His blood ran cold. If _she_ was spying on them...

"Ken!" Jay shouted, running over. "Let her up, goddammit! It's Kyla!"

"Not until she gives me a good explanation of what she was doing spying on us," Ken said. Somewhat to his surprise, it came out in a snarl. He hadn't quite intended to snarl. Kyla, or Katse, or whoever the hell she was, was struggling in his grip, trying to pull free.

"Let her _up_, I said!" Jay said, grabbing Ken's shoulder and hauling him back. "Damn you, Ken, she's my _wife_, not a Galactor!"

__

Oh, no, Joe, you're wrong, Ken thought. _She's your wife and a Galactor._ He let Jay haul him up, mainly because he wasn't nearly strong enough to resist Jay's enhanced strength, but he kept his eyes on Kyla. "That remains to be seen," he said, and his voice was ice. He had rather been expecting something like this-- hoping it wouldn't happen, but expecting it nonetheless. She had finally shown her true colors. Had she remembered the past, or was it just vague echoes that had driven her to turn on ISO? Ken didn't know, and didn't much care. "I want an explanation _now_."

Kyla sat up, looking for all the world like a terrified innocent. _Good act,_ Ken thought coldly. _But then, that's your specialty, isn't it? You tricked me once this way. Never again._ "Well?" he demanded.

"I-- I only wanted to see Jay," she said, stammering. "He-- I hadn't seen him, in so long-- he wouldn't talk about what he did-- why am I considered a security risk? I wouldn't betray him-- I'm his _wife_!" Now she got her voice under a bit more control as the bite of anger seeped into it. All very calculated to win sympathy, no doubt, and while Jinpei didn't look like he was buying any, Jun and Ryu both looked as if they were softening toward her. Oh, she was good at this. "I've done a lot of good for ISO over the past month-- a lot of work investigating Galactor-- how _dare_ you treat me like this!"

"You're in a restricted area," Ken said coldly. "A _very_ restricted area. And I found you spying in the air vents. Exactly what was I supposed to think?"

"Well, if I asked permission to come, I wouldn't have gotten it!" she replied hotly. "I was in the air vents because it was the only way I could see Jay!"

Jun touched Ken's arm. "Ken, I think she's telling the truth..."

"Damn _straight_ she's telling the truth!" Jay exploded. "What the fuck is your problem, Ken? Kyla's not the enemy-- Galactor is! And if you don't stop treating my wife like some kind of second-class citizen, I'm going to walk. I mean it. My _friends_ don't beat on my wife."

Ken was trapped. Jay didn't _know_ why Kyla's behavior was so suspicious, and Ken couldn't tell him, not if there was any chance whatsoever that Kyla was telling the truth, and Ken was cautious enough not to take that chance. He was by no means assured of her innocence, but he was going to have to back down, because he couldn't tell Jay why Kyla was such a danger.

He opened his mouth to speak, but Kyla hadn't gotten her pound of flesh yet. With eyes that were pure malice, she said to Jay, "Your _pregnant_ wife, no less."

"That's right--" There was dawning fury in Jay's voice, and a sudden sick feeling in the pit of Ken's stomach. He had totally forgotten she was pregnant-- she wasn't showing yet, not even after a month since she'd come to ISO-- and it occurred to him with horror that what he'd just done might cause her to lose the baby. Whether she was Berg Katse or not, the child was half Jay's, and an innocent regardless. He looked at Kyla with mute horror, trying to summon the voice to apologize, and saw Jay rushing at him. 

"_Bastard_!" Jay snarled, and slugged Ken in the jaw, sending him skidding across the floor. Ken might have dodged, but didn't, feeling that Jay was justified. The punch was at normal Joe-strength, but then, Joe had never exactly been feeble, and the world spun for a few dizzy moments as Ken lay on the floor.

"Are you all right?" Jun was asking Kyla.

"I think so. I'm shaken up, but I think the baby's unhurt. Annoyed, but unhurt."

Jay was standing over Ken. "If you _ever, ever_ touch my wife again, Ken, I'll knock your head off, I swear. I mean it."

"Agreed," Ken said shakily, sitting up with a hand on his jaw. "I deserved that."

"Yeah, you did."

He looked over at Kyla. "But _you_ should have known better. I didn't know it was you until I had you on the floor, and by that time the damage would have been done. I'm sorry about the risk to the baby, and I really hope you're right about it being unhurt. But it was partially your fault for being up there, you know. And I'm _still_ not sure I like your explanation."

"Look, you just scared the shit out of her, nearly made her lose the baby, _I_ don't think Kyla needs to hear any more of this from you!" Jay said. He walked over to her and extended a hand down. "Come on, Ky. I'll escort you out of here." He glared at Ken, as if to dare him to countermand that. Ken had no interest in doing so. He waited until they were gone before getting to his feet.

Jinpei burst out, "Shouldn't we _tell_ him, ani-ki?"

"That the woman he loves, the woman carrying his child, is his worst enemy? Do you know what that would do to him?" Ken said, his eyes haunted. "Besides, if he knew... he might kill her. And I don't want that child hurt."

"Maybe you should have thought of that before yanking her out of the grating," Jun said severely.

Ken gave her a look. "Jun, I already explained. How the hell was I supposed to realize she was pregnant when I didn't even see who she was until I had her on the floor? She's not showing yet."

"Maybe you could have used a little common sense," Jun said, showing more spine than usual. Possibly it was her maternal instinct, reacting to the threat to Jay's child. "Why would anyone be in those air vents to spy on us?"

"Don't be stupid, Jun! Galactor still wants to know our secret identities; we'd be targets for assassination; Galactor could watch our battle techniques and learn how to defeat us... There are a million reasons."

"Yeah, one-chan. Wake up!"

"Don't back-talk me, Jinpei. All right, I guess I understand why you were so rough pulling her out. But I really do think she's telling the truth, Ken, I don't think she's reverted."

"Now I don't think we can know that," Ryu said. "'Cause if she's Katse, she can act like anything. So she _could_ be lying..."

"Yes, Katse's a consummate actor," Ken said. "She could lie perfectly, Jun. She has."

"That's not why. Think about it. She already knows our secret identities, so that wasn't her motive. If she'd come to assassinate us, she would have had to smuggle some sort of very sophisticated weapon in-- I've checked those detectors in the air vents perfectly, and if there was any metal, plastique, or dangerous chemicals anywhere on her, a thousand alarms would have gone off. Besides, she probably would have used it right away. As for observing our fighting style... Ken, Berg Katse already _knows_ how we fight. He-- she's observed us at close range countless times. Has Galactor _ever_ decided to come up with something to counteract our specific moves? It doesn't make sense that she would be here to learn about our new techniques when she never did anything with her knowledge of the old ones." She looked at Ryu and Jinpei. "Don't you think so? I mean, if Galactor were going to send spies, they'd be more interested in the specs for the New God Phoenix, or the location of our new secret base, or something. What's the point to spying on _us_?"

"So you believe her story then, one-chan?"

"If it's not all an act, then she loves Joe very much. And he _has_ been ignoring her lately to be with us. Women can do crazy things to be with the men they love sometimes. I think she was probably telling the truth-- she just wanted to see him."

Jun was right, Ken realized with a sickening lurch. If you looked at it logically, it really did make more sense that Kyla was telling the truth. Ken had overreacted because he knew who she was, or who she had been-- and if she _had_ been telling the truth, that overreaction might start awakening memories. _Damn!_ If Kyla had been innocent, then Ken had just done the absolute worst thing he could possibly do.

"I'd better go apologize to her," he muttered. "Before it's too late..."

* * *

When Ken had been ready to attack Kyla, Jay had felt protectively loyal toward her, and defended her, especially after he realized that Ken had put the baby at risk. It didn't mean he didn't think Kyla was a bonehead, and now that they were alone, he proceeded to inform her of this opinion at great length.

"What the hell were you playing at? In the first place, you _know_ you're not supposed to be in a restricted area-- I think you nearly gave Ken a heart attack. And what the fuck were you doing crawling around the air vents with a _baby_, for Chrissake? Suppose you'd gotten stuck, or suppose you'd injured yourself in there. How the hell was anyone supposed to get you out? Did you ever think of that?" And so forth. Kyla showed little sign of listening, and finally he ran down. Jay was not used to shouting at another person at length-- he was usually the one shouted at, and he dealt with such situations by descending into a black mood, smashing something, or stomping off. When he tried to sustain an argument, he got tired, and this time, being the instigator of the argument, none of his usual techniques would work. So he just said tiredly, "Ky, have you heard a word I said?"

"I heard you," she said. "But you didn't have anything important to say, and I was thinking."

If he weren't tired of shouting, he would have made an issue of the "anything important" comment. "Great. Next time tell me sooner, so I don't wear my voice out."

"He hates me. He really hates me, doesn't he?"

For a second, Jay couldn't follow the _non sequitur_; then he realized she must be talking about Ken. "He doesn't hate you. You mean Ken, right?" She nodded. "You just scared the shit out of him, that's all."

"Why am I a security risk?"

"I don't know, take it up with Dr. Nambu. I guess because they don't know you all that well. You don't have a past. If it wasn't for the fact that they remember who I am, I'd be a security risk too."

"It's a lot more than that," Kyla said. "I saw it in his eyes. He hated me. He'd've killed me without a second thought if he thought he had to."

"I don't know, Ky. I just don't know. He's a good man-- I don't know why the two of you can't seem to get along."

"He thinks I'm someone I'm not."

"Does he? Who?"

"Some Galactor woman you all used to fight."

Jay exploded laughing. "A Galactor? _You_? That's so ridiculous! The idea that you, of all people, would be a Galactor--!! 'Gee, Gel Sadra, do you think we can take over the world without actually hurting anybody?' No, Ken can't be _that_ ridiculous. I don't believe it."

"They all think it. That's why they hate me."

"You're not serious. All they'd have to do is talk to you for ten seconds-- you couldn't _possibly_ be a Galactor..." They rounded a corner, and there was Ken. Jay's eyes hardened. "Yo. Haven't you done enough damage for one day?"

"I came to apologize," Ken said. He certainly looked contrite. "You shouldn't have been in a restricted area, but I overreacted badly. I've been on edge a lot lately-- maybe I've started jumping at shadows. That's no excuse, I know. I frightened you badly, and I'm sorry."

Kyla's eyes burned into Ken's. "Just an overreaction? It had nothing to do with what I look like?"

Guilt blossomed all over Ken's features. "Who you look like? Wh-- what do you mean?"

"I mean Dr. Nambu told me that I look like some Galactor woman you used to fight. That's why you hate me, isn't it. You think I'm her."

"I don't--"

"Or do you hate me for myself? That's a pleasant thing to know."

"I don't hate you."

"Yes, you do."

"No. I don't hate you. But I don't trust you, either." Ken sighed. "Dr. Nambu thinks we can trust you, but I'm not so sure. We don't know anything about you. You could have anything in your past, and it could surface at any time and attack us."

"My word isn't good enough?" Jay asked dangerously.

"Jay, I know you love her, but you used to have a very bad track record for falling in love with Galactors. Your judgment isn't good enough, I'm afraid. Now if you want me to trust you, Kyla, you'd better act trustworthy. There's a _reason_ why you're not supposed to spy on us training. Follow the rules and keep out of trouble, and you'll prove you can be trusted. Until then-- well, I don't know you, and anyone I don't know could be an enemy."

If Jay still had his memories, Ken thought as he turned to go, he'd know Ken was not telling the full truth. It had always been Joe who was the suspicious one; Ken trusted people _until_ he knew them. The trouble was that he knew, or had known, Kyla. 

"All the work I've done for ISO-- that doesn't mean anything to you?" she asked.

"Not yet."

He walked away, and Kyla was left with fury in her eyes. Somewhere he had lied. She couldn't tell precisely where. Perhaps she _should_ research her past, so she could counter his suspicion. Maybe then she could prove she could be trusted.

Or-- what if he had reason to hate her?

Jay escorted her up to the edge of the restricted area, and then turned to face her. "You can go by yourself from here."

"Can I? Oh, you're just _too_ good to me," Kyla said, her voice dripping sarcasm. "Are you that eager to get rid of me?"

"No, no-- I just have to get back to the others. They need me."

"I need you!" She grabbed the sides of his head suddenly and pulled him close. With him in the high-soled boots of his bird style and her in flats, they were exactly the same height. "Jay, do you know how long it's been since we've really seen each other? For more than ten minutes at a time? I never _see_ you anymore, Jay! Don't you know how much that hurts?"

"You think I like it?" He pulled her hands off his face, gently, and placed his arms around her shoulders, looking into her eyes. "There's a lot of work I have to do before I'm ready. That's all. You think I _want_ to spend so much time away from you?"

"Take the night off and come home with me," Kyla suggested. "Just one night won't kill you, will it?"

It had been at least two weeks since they'd last made love, and Jay was by no means unconscious of this fact. The suggestion was terribly tempting, and he wasn't very good at resisting temptation. Besides. Ken owed them one. "All right," he said, and lifted his hand to his mouth. "Ken, this is Jay. Kyla's still shook up-- I'm taking her home, and I'm taking the rest of the night off."

"Jay..."

"You _owe_ me, Ken. You owe _her_."

A sigh. "All right. But show up early tomorrow morning. You need the training."

"Right," Jay said, and lowered the bracelet, letting it shut off. He looked at Kyla with an evil grin. "Early, of course, being before four in the afternoon."

Kyla laughed. "Oh, of course. We'll get you back to work before nightfall tomorrow.."

* * *

True to his word, Jay made it in before four in the afternoon the next day, but not much before four, about which Ken was not pleased at all. Jay only grinned through Ken's tirade, and finally said, in a big-brotherly tone of voice, "Someday you'll understand," which didn't improve Ken's disposition any. Kyla didn't go back to work until the day after that, when Nambu called her into his office.

"I'm informed you snuck into the Science Ninja Team's training room through the air vents?"

She squirmed slightly inside. She hadn't wanted to get Nambu annoyed. "Well, yes."

"Mm. Very resourceful of you. We'll have to tighten up security now, of course. May I ask why?"

"I hadn't really seen Jay in close to a month. And I didn't realize it was such a big deal."

"Well, it really shouldn't have been, not for you. It's intended to protect their identities, and you already know them. I'm afraid Ken was being a trifle paranoid."

"He's always paranoid about me. What do I have to do to prove I'm not an axe murderer? Or a Galactor, for that matter?"

"It'll come with time, I'm sure. I'm afraid Ken may not have entirely shaken his preconceptions about you-- there were several Galactor women who looked something like you, and while they're all dead to the best of our knowledge, it's Ken's job to fear the worst. I personally am convinced you aren't a Galactor, and I'll talk to Ken about it. In the meantime, I'd like you to find as many weak points in our security as you can, and write them up in a report. And please don't go sneaking into restricted areas again. If you want to see Jay, I'm sure a pass or something can be arranged if you consult with me." He waved her out.

* * *

Kyla's action led to a major revamping of the security system, assisted in great part by Kyla herself. She was no longer working quite so hard, however, and neither was Jay. They had both decided they needed to keep time with each other as a priority, or they would burn out. On the other hand, Jay really did need to train heavily, and time was running out. What with the demands of his work and his wife, he had no time to himself, and although Ken was always nagging him to go ask his doctor where the enhanced strength had come from, he couldn't find time to do it for another three weeks or so. 

When he finally managed to make time to go in for a general checkup, he asked Dr. Kymel about it. "Oh, that's simple," she told him. "I had to use a great deal of artificial components in reviving you, and in fitting them all together I ended up making reconstructing a good bit of you."

"Artificial?" He turned the word over in his mind, somewhat stunned. "You mean I'm a cyborg?"

"Well, yes. Not the sort Galactor used to manufacture-- well, you don't remember them anyway, but they were essentially human-shaped mecha imprinted with a human being's engrams. More androids than cyborgs. That's not you. Most of your internal organs, bones and muscle had to be replaced, so I replaced them with quasi-organic artificial parts, made from high-strength plastics. It's not like you're made of metal; in fact, offhand I can't think of any metal in you, except of course the trace quantities everyone has. Most of your skin is normal; I put shock absorbers under it in some places so your own increased strength won't bruise you, but you're not by any means invulnerable. Your blood is still your own; I had some replacement blood circulating in there for a while, because you'd lost so much blood, but by now it's all your own blood. Your bone marrow doesn't produce it anymore, of course, since you don't _have_ bone marrow; I implanted artificial organs to produce blood for you, and they're capable of working at double human capacity, so if you're hurt, you'll recover your normal blood volume a lot faster. Also, your head and neck region are still original parts, as well as--" she smiled-- "those organs responsible for Kyla's present condition. Lose _them_, and I can't replace them. So be careful."

"Yeah, I think I can manage that," he said dryly. Something was bothering him, though. "Okay, the new muscles and stuff are why I'm stronger than I used to be, right? But Ken says I'm a little better than I used to be with guns, and my reflexes-- and that's after having not practiced for two years. Why?"

"There are actually some brain implants, to compensate for some serious damage you did yourself before. They don't affect your mind-- they cover vision, balance, tactile and kinesthetic senses, and they compensate for the improvements in your body as well as for the damaged areas of your brain. But your higher brain functions, your thinking capacity, that wasn't touched."

"Except I lost my memory."

"Well, yes. That too."

"Is Ky a cyborg too?"

"No, it wasn't necessary in her case. Kyla has amazing recuperative powers-- I was able to induce her body to heal naturally. The only side effect left was an instability in her female structures, and that's being corrected by drugs."

"So if I'm super-strong and Kyla's not... I always thought, if someone was super-strong and didn't know it, they'd crush people."

"No. Your kinesthetic implant has a built-in compensatory system. You will always use exactly the amount of strength that you subconsciously gauge you'll require. Your subconscious knows how much strength is needed, and your kinesthetic implant knows how much force you need to produce to gain that strength. So you'll never crush anything unless you decide to."

"Why exactly did we lose our memories?" Jay asked. He looked at her hard. "With you mucking around inside my head, it's not surprising I'd have amnesia. But you didn't muck with Kyla, or you say you didn't, at least. So how come _she_ has amnesia, too?"

Kymel looked at him intently. "Sometimes it's impossible to explain such things," she said. "Perhaps both of you had something you desperately wanted to forget. Does it bother you, that you can't remember?"

"'Course it does. My friends all remember more about me than I do..."

"Let me tell you a story about Joe Asakura," Kymel said, getting to her feet and beginning to pace. "Joe had the misfortune to be born to a Galactor-affiliated crimelord and his wife. In his childhood, this seemed like no misfortune at all. His parents were loving and caring, and although he was a wild young boy who never much liked to listen to authority, they were as gentle as they could be without spoiling him utterly. Even when he did bad things-- and as a child he did some _very_ bad things-- he never had reason to doubt that his parents loved him. And so he was happy.

"But unbeknownest to him, his Galactor parents wanted to be free of the organization. They turned against Galactor-- something Galactor could not permit. One day on the beach, two bullets ended their lives, and Joe Asakura's happiness, forever.

"Oh, there was some small enjoyment in his life, after that. He had friends. He could never truly open up to them, never be as close as he'd really like or tell them how he felt, because he feared that anyone he loved would die. But he did have friends. He had several lovers, most of whom died, some at his own hands. And the only thing he lived for, the passion that drove him, was his hate and rage at Galactor."

Jay listened, horrified but fascinated. Nobody had told him _this_ about himself. He could sympathize with that self-that-had-been, yet felt no emotional connection-- he was sympathizing with a person in a story, not anyone he could remember being. "They-- never told me this."

"Of course not. They never truly understood how terribly unhappy you were, how much the rage within you was consuming you. Is that what you want to remember? Is that the life you want back?"

"No."

"I didn't think so."

"But how do _you_ know all this? I thought you didn't know who we were!"

"Oh, I knew. But there was a reason for your amnesia, you see-- both of you were escaping unhappy lives. What was the point to saving your lives, just to send you back to misery? I wasn't about to tell you who you were-- if you were going to remember, let it happen naturally, I thought. If not, why should I interfere in your happiness?"

"I know who I was now, and I _still_ don't remember."

"You don't really want to. Subconsciously, you know you're better off not remembering. If ever it seems you'd be happier remembering, you will."

"There must have been _some_ good in my past..."

"And maybe those parts will come back. But it must be a measure of how bad things really were for you that you don't remember anything."

"What about Kyla? You know who she was?"

"Do you?"

"No, I'm asking. Who was she?"

"Kyla..." Kymel looked away again. "Kyla was a desperately unhappy person. She grew up an orphan on the streets, surviving at the cost of her soul. She wanted friends, she hungered for love, and she never had any. None at all. She was one of the loneliest people I've ever heard of. That's why she's so insecure with you, you know. Deep inside, she remembers loneliness, and she's terrified of it."

"_Was_ she a Galactor?"

"Do you think so?"

"She's been saying she thinks she might be. Because of Ken being suspicious of her."

"But do _you_ think so? And would it change your opinion of her if she was?"

"No--"

"Then why is it relevant?"

"Well, it _would_ explain what Ken's problem with her is. He's been better lately, but... And Jun's fine, but the other two are suspicious, too."

Kymel made an exasperated noise. "Ken's _problem_ with her is jealousy, whether he wants to admit it or not. You were his best friend, and the fact that there's someone he doesn't know in your life is bothering him. The others are just jumping on the bandwagon. You tell Kyla I said so." She looked at him. "Think about it, Jay. For Kyla to have been a Galactor once, and to be the woman she is now, she would have had to change radically when she developed amnesia. Did _you_ change radically?"

"No."

"Well, then."

"But she's been having nightmares. I think she might be starting to remember, whatever it was."

"Oh no..." Kymel put her hand to her head. She looked up at Jay. "Try to stop it if you can, Jay. Give her love, give her everything she didn't get, before, and try to hold it off, at least. Because if she remembers... it'll be so horrible for her..." She shook her head. "People have gone mad from loneliness before, and I think she did. The psychological damage was so great... well, if she remembers, I'm not optimistic for her mental health."

Jay swallowed. "How can I stop it? I don't even _know_ who she used to be."

"Make her believe that all that matters is who she is now. Because that is all that matters, Jay. Remember that."

* * *

It had been about five weeks since Kyla's excursion into the air vent, and Utoland was deep into winter. Several times, Kyla's nightmares, the memory of Ken's suspicion, almost drove her to seek out the truth about her past. Ken figured in her dreams as a nightmare image-- and more horrible, sometimes in dreams Jay was trying to kill her. Paranoia suffused her sleep. When she was awake, and working, she could put it out of her mind, and when she was with Jay, she could believe she was being ridiculous. He had been so sweet to her lately. She had thus decided not to actively explore her past, or try to uncover the meaning of the flashbacks that still tickled at the back of her mind sometimes. She really didn't want to know, she felt sure.

Today she stood in front of the mirror, slightly over five months pregnant, and felt disgusted as she looked at herself. She had begun to show obviously at last. _I'm fat,_ she thought disgustedly, even though logically she knew she wasn't. Her stomach was still only a rounded swelling-- enough to make her look pregnant, but nothing gross yet. She had put on a great deal of weight, true, but her frame was large enough to take a great deal of weight without becoming fat. The extra weight had made her look rather voluptuous, rounding her breasts, hips and rear, making her face and limbs softer and less angular. Jay had no complaints about the change in her appearance.

But _she_ did, and she thought she was fat. This soft, womanly woman with the pregnant belly in the mirror did not fit Kyla's self-image. Kyla Samonetti was thin, with narrow hips and small breasts. Androgynous...

As she thought the word, another of her almost-flashbacks came to plague her. Since she had met the Science Ninja Team, two months ago, she had had hundreds of these things, but never clearly. Half-seen images, a murmuring of words... Now the flashback came in the form of a kinesthetic perception, and this time it was very clear. She recalled feeling herself to be a man. The sensation of having broader shoulders, narrower hips, a flat chest and organs hanging between her legs... It didn't dissipate as most of her flashbacks did, but remained sharp enough for her to look at it carefully.

Though they were rarely clear, Kyla did know that three things triggered her flashbacks: loneliness, alienation/paranoia, and androgyny. She had had vivid dreams in which she was a man, but never before had she so clearly remembered masculinity during the day. Now she knew why her pregnancy disturbed her-- in her mind she was androgynous, not fully masculine or feminine, and a pregnant woman was too glaringly female to fit her self image. She had always known there were aspects of androgyny about herself-- for one thing, although she was completely faithful to Jay, she knew herself to be bisexual in inclination. But how could she remember being _male_? If she had been a transsexual who'd gotten a sex change, she would not be fertile-- and the stomach in the mirror gave silent testimony that whatever else she might be, infertile she was not. Was she imagining it? Constructing a kinesthetic impression out of imagination, and believing it to be memory?

She could remember no faces, no names or clear details of others' bodies. But if she tried, she could summon exactly how it felt to plunge an erection into a soft female body; the sensation of urine traveling down and out a penis, and the fact that the penis would have to be shaken afterward to prevent droplets from running down the leg; the sick feeling of being kicked in the balls, similar to but much worse than a stomach punch or a kick to the solar plexus; the embarrassment of having an erection at an inappropriate time, or worse, not being able to have one when the situation required it. There was no way she could make up all that detail. She _had_ been a man.

How?

She turned away from the mirror and got dressed. It was time to go to work now. She couldn't afford to spend time thinking about it...

Except that every time she had a free moment, she _did_ think about it. How could she ever have been a man? She didn't feel as if _this_ body, as if womanhood, was alien to her; it wasn't that she had been transplanted into a body not her own. This body was utterly familiar. But so was that male body in memory. Somehow she had been _both_.

__

"...not a man or a woman..."

Both. Hermaphrodite. Yes. Sitting in the break room with her coffee, it came to her. She had been hermaphrodite, with the capacity to be either sex. The thought came with a total lack of surprise-- it felt right. She _knew_ it was true. But what did it _mean_?

It wasn't until she was getting ready to leave, locking up her cabinet and her desk, that it hit her with horrible clarity. She remembered Nambu mentioning that there had been hermaphrodites in Galactor, back before they knew that Gel Sadra identified herself as female. She remembered her sudden fascination with the concept, and how she had shoved away the sympathy she felt for the poor hermaphrodites because it disturbed her.

Had _she_ been one of those Galactor constructs?

If it was true, she didn't want to know. She _didn't_. She was happy this way, and as long as she took her pills, she would remain a woman. But Ken would always be suspicious of her, and she would never know why. Did he have a right to be suspicious? Perhaps if she knew who he thought she was-- perhaps if she knew who she had been, she would be able to prove her own loyalty somehow. Certainly the current method of ignoring the suspicions and hoping they would go away wasn't working. She knew the truth would make her unhappy, but she had to know, or what hope did she have of earning Ken's trust?

So she looked up Galactor hermaphrodites on the terminal. It told her that information was historical and required a higher access level. Hadn't her access level just been upgraded, Kyla thought irritably? She tried Galactor constructs and ambiguous sexuality, but neither got her any farther. Somebody had put a block on the information, and she rather suspected she knew who.

Kyla decided to try something. Her access was sufficiently high that she could create an account for somebody else, but the other's clearance could never be higher than her own. That was fine. Higher was not what Kyla needed; she wanted an account with no special flags on it. She generated her imaginary account in the name Kyle Samonetti, and then tried looking up Galactor hermaphrodites.

One line came up on the screen. Kyla wanted to weep, or scream, or die. Her heart stopped as she looked at the horrible, horrible words.

"See Historical Reference: Berg Katse."

No-- oh, no....

Kyle Samonetti couldn't directly look up Berg Katse-- apparently that was a specific enough reference that it had been placed at a clearance where Kyla couldn't reach it. She excised Kyle's account from the computers and stood up. She had access to the Records Room, where ISO kept hard copies of all the data in the computers and data that wasn't available by computer, during the day on a need-to-know basis. The place would be locked now; but in the process of revamping the security system, Kyla had acquired stolen copies of numerous keys, never knowing when they might be handy, and that was one of them. Now she wondered about that. Why was it automatic with her to ignore security directives, to steal keys to restricted areas when she had no idea if she'd ever need them? Maybe the same reason that paranoia told her to know all the possible exit routes from every building, including the ones through the access shafts that no one would normally ever use. Maybe it had something to do with that name...

As if in a nightmare, she went to the Records Room and unlocked the door, without bothering to lock it behind her. She was the last person in the building, aside from the cleaning people, who would assume she had business in there anyway. She dumped her purse on a carrel and sleepwalked to the filing cabinets. She didn't want to know. She had to know.

In the "K" drawer, it was the fattest folder there. Kyla drew it out, torn between fear of the contents and horrified fascination, the _need_ to know what lay inside. She stayed torn long enough that she reached the carrel with her terminal before she got the folder open.

There were photographs that fell out the moment she opened the folder. She picked them up with trembling hands. The first two were black&whites of a little girl, probably ages 4 and 7 or so. The third was herself.

Oh, the hair was styled differently. The face was younger, and at the same time harder-looking. But it was unmistakably her own face. Kyla felt a lurch in the pit of her stomach. It was suddenly very hot, or maybe very cold, in the room, and she was having trouble breathing. In, out. Take deep breaths. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? All right. Next step. She picked up the next few photographs. The person in them looked distinctly male, though an androgynous, effeminate male, dressed in a purple costume with a stylized mask.

__

Rittger said he looked too effeminate. No one would follow him, not with his face. He needed a mask, something distinctive that would in effect become his face. Preferably one that didn't make him look effeminate. Actually Rittger hadn't phrased it that way. "One that doesn't make you look like a fag," Rittger had said. But then, he didn't have to like Rittger, only obey him, and then only until he was trained.

The mask shop was dim. "Yes? Can I help you?" asked the maskmaker, an old woman with dark glasses.

"I want a mask."

"You sound young. Is your rank high enough for a mask?"

"Would I ask for one if it wasn't?" he asked arrogantly.

"You might. Many do. But it won't be me who suffers if you're lying." She stood up. "What sort of mask?"

"Something... menacing but attractive. Something that makes me look dangerous, but not unpleasant to look at. Magnetic and fearsome."

"Ah," she said, and smiled. "So many want to look hideous and terrifying. Yours will be distinctive, then. Have you a motif in mind?"

"Cats."

"Well." She frowned. "A cat is a good choice for the sort of thing you want. But cats are often associated with the feminine. Are you sure you want to be so associated?"

His face burned. "Are you making fun of the way I look?"

"Not at all. I can't see the way you look, young man. I'm blind..."

Kyla sucked in a breath. She _remembered_ something, for the first time. She remembered the blind mask maker, and how she'd constructed the mask with a laser scope to measure the face. She remembered picking out the colors, modifying the design. That mask... she _remembered_ it.

Would she have remembered it, if she hadn't already realized who she was?

The sick feeling was coming back, and she pushed the folder away. No. No more. But the demons of curiosity still nagged at her. How could she fight what she didn't know? Ken-- he thought she was Katse. How could she fight _that_? In the end, she pulled the folder back and started reading-- and everything she read set off a flood of memories...

Name at birth: Katzchen Brenn Bergmann. _(In the hospital, she knelt on the floor with the birth certificate in her hands, staring in fury at where "sex" had been filled in and crossed out three times, and finally a "?" had been filled in.)_ Country of birth: Switzerland. _("The land of your birth has always been a neutral country...")_ Institution-alized at the Human Genetics Institute of Berlin until age 5. _("Outside they'd call you a freak and rip you apart. Only in the Institute are you safe.")_ Adopted by Wilhemina Bergmann, the natural mother of the child. _("Your name is not Berg! It's Katzchen! You're my baby daughter Katzchen!")_ Thereafter little is known about the childhood, until Katse entered Galactor...

Kyla read and read, and with every word felt blanks in her mind opening, a trickle, a torrent of memories, revealing her past self to her in all the pain and horror and evil, and yet she could not stop...

* * *

Kyla hadn't called. Normally she called Jay as soon as she got off work, and he then knocked off practice for the night. By that time, usually, Jinpei had already quit. Tonight it was _really_ late, and she hadn't called. Jun and Jinpei had both turned in for the night already, and Ryu was looking like he was going to quit soon. Jay mentioned this to Ken, who dropped down off the gymnastics maze.

"I was going to swing by Intelligence in a few minutes anyway. Want me to go look for her?"

"I'll come with you."

"No, you're beat," Ken said, and it was true. Jay didn't usually practice this late, and he was tired. He might be super-strong, but he didn't have superhuman endurance. "Why don't you go home and wait for her? Take a shower, get into bed... I'll make sure she gets home in one piece."

Jay frowned. Since the incident with the air vents a month ago, Ken had treated Kyla with nothing but respect and courtesy. He supposed it would be all right. Maybe it was a peace gesture. "All right."

* * *

Kyla sat in the room, her head in her hands, feeling numb.

She remembered it, all of it. She remembered the anguish she'd suffered, the loneliness, the bouts with depression and suicidal tendencies. But what was worse, she remembered the things that had made her happy: The impotent hatred from those s/he'd mastered. The petty cruelties done without a second thought, the sadistic arts performed for enjoyment. Crushing enemies and laughing at their pain. Hurting innocents, and smiling to see them suffer. Murder.

There was a schizoid gap in her mind where Katse ended and Kyla began. Since the beginning of her separate existence, since she'd awakened at Dr. Kymel's lab, Kyla had been a pacifist. She could not bear the thought of killing, of hurting others. And now she could remember an existence where she'd not only killed, she'd enjoyed it. She could remember the pleasure others' pain had given her, and at the same time feel sick with the memories. 50 million dead, mostly because of her. At least a hundred she could remember killing with her own hands, at least a thousand whose deaths she had presided at. She had given the orders that resulted in countless dead, and _enjoyed_ it... oh, no wonder Ken hated her. Anyone should hate her. She hated herself.

__

Why did I have to find out? Tears glittered in her eyes._ Why couldn't I have gone on, not knowing..._

"Hey," came a voice behind her. "Jay's been waiting for you to call. I sent him home..."

She turned around, but did not see Ken, her husband's friend. She heard the voice and saw the face and saw Gatchaman. The last time _he'd seen Gatchaman. The enemy was trapped in a cage with electric shock, and his hand was on the button to give agony to his enemy. To give death. **Are you happy now? Oh, you've seen my face, stripped away my mask, my armor, left me psychologically naked and raped me, but it doesn't do you any good now, does it? At the end of your life, it's my hand that delivers the deathblows, and all you have done to me becomes meaningless, doesn't it?** He laughed to watch the enemy writhe in pain. **I win. Me!**_

Something-- a flicker in the pain-wracked eyes-- warned him, and he swung around as the Science Ninja Team charged in. They were out for blood. The lesser three began to rip their way through his men, while the Condor vaulted over Galactors, heading for him. **No, I can't stay here-- he'll kill me!** Turning, abandoning the device to cause pain, he ran for the escape hatch. **Your leader is hurt and bleeding. Go to him, save him, leave me alone!**

But the Condor followed, bird from hell hot on his heels as he made his way down at a breakneck pace. The doors that closed his enemy away fell before the Condor's explosives, slowing but not stopping the demon. **Don't follow me! Go back! Your teammates need you!** He came out to the hangar and his heart stopped. A burnt and smoldering ruin stood where his escape should have been. **Was this your plan all along? Distract me with your leader while you closed off my exits, to capture me, kill me? It won't work-- I have other paths left to me...** He ran to the emergency exit, threw it open and ran out into the snow-filled night, the whine of the exit alarm behind him.

His boots crunched on snow and the cold whipped into his face. The moon was small and obscured by clouds. **Yes I can get away I can disappear into the night and he'll never find me never nev--**

Pain exploded in his chest, and he screamed, black blood welling up in his mouth and choking him. A thick point of agony, shrieking all down the nerves of his chest. Blood in his lungs. He looked down and saw the point of the cablegun protruding from his lungs, just barely missing his heart. Blood everywhere staining the snow. So much blood. All of it his. Hot blood turning cold and frozen in the open air, and he burned along that point while the rest of his body went cold. **No oh no this can't be it can't I wasn't I was never supposed to die--** Knees buckled. He started to fall, and then a yanking. His guts being ripped backwards out of him, the demon retracting the cable, pulling him back. Fish on the line. Blood and bile and vomit rose in his throat, poured out onto the snow. 

There was a knife in his boot, hidden for emergencies. Never again to be caught without a weapon, helpless, unmasked. Its hilt was hard, and his cold hand found it, closed around it until there was pain there, for he couldn't know he was holding it otherwise. The Condor pulled him around to face him, with eyes glittering triumph. One hand still held the gun, with the cable that snaked around the back of him, attaching him to his enemy. The other held him by the collar, holding him up. He clutched his enemy's arm to support himself because his legs had melted. So warm next to his icy cold. His enemy's warm chest, warm breath so close. Triumphant hateful smile.

"It's over, Katse. You're not getting away this time."

Knife in the numb hand. He drove it deep into the Condor's stomach, watched the expression of triumph change to pain as he dragged it up through the rib cage with the last of his strength. Hot blood spurted over him. **Yes, my enemy, join your blood with mine. Join me in hell.** "Neither will you," he hissed, and the Condor sagged, releasing him. They both fell to their knees in a pool of mingled blood, holding each other to steady themselves. Their blood was diluted by melted snow. "Neither will you..."

"Doesn't... matter..." the Condor choked out, blood welling from his lips. "'F I die... to take you down... 's enough."

****

So noble, so noble till the end. Or does your hate burn so hot that you really don't care, so long as I die? Warm me with your hot hate, Condor Joe, warm me with your blood, for I have none of my own and I'm so cold...

Darkness. Vertigo. Falling. The sound of another's labored, agonized breathing. Falling together in a tangle of arms and legs, bound by madness and death. **Hold me, my enemy, I'm so cold--**

--dying is a lonely thing--

-so cold--

Someone shaking her like a rag doll. "What have you _done_?"

Focus. The present. This was now, she was warm, she was alive and Ken was shaking her. Kyla pulled herself free with an effort. It was so hard to push the memory of her death from her mind-- so vivid and awful-- but this was now. She had to deal with Ken.

"Wh-- what?"

"_These_." Ken shoved the dossier across the table, and then pushed her against the wall. "You remember, don't you." His voice was the cold of the grave, the snow beckoning. "And now you're going to try to destroy us?"

"N-- _no_!!" So hard to keep her equilibrium. He was going to strangle her, beat her, she had to get away, where was her gun-- no. No. The _present_. "I don't want to destroy anyone!" See him as Ken, not as Gatchaman. She had rights here. "I'm not your enemy. Let _go_ of me!"

He let go and backed away, and the panic subsided in her, but his eyes and stance were no less menacing. "You've seen the files. You know who you are now."

"I know who I _was_."

"You remember that you're Berg Katse?"

"I remember that I _was_ Berg Katse. I'm Kyla Samonetti now."

"Do you think changing your name is going to fool anyone?" Ken's face was dark with fury. "You're plotting something, I know you are! Were you going to try to get revenge? Murder Joe in his sleep and run back to Galactor? Or was it more devious than that?"

"I-- _no_! I wasn't planning anything!" _"This is Jay. I found the two of you together, dying in each other's arms..." **hold me, my enemy, dying is a lonely thing...**_ She loved Jay. He had killed her, and she him, but it didn't matter. Ken was Gatchaman, but Jay was not the murderous Condor, and the past was past. "Do you really want to know?" she snarled. "I _knew_ I wouldn't want to know the truth. But it was your suspicions that drove me to find out. I had to know why you hated me before I could deal with it. So now I know, and I wish to God I'd never learned!"

"Oh, yes. Your poor miserable life."

"I'm not talking about my poor miserable life! This is my life now-- the past is past. But do you think it doesn't hurt, to know who I am? I'm not a killer-- I'm _not_ Berg Katse! But I _remember_ being Katse. I remember what I did. Don't you understand?" Of course he didn't. She wasn't picking the right words to _make_ him understand. "You're a killer! But you can make excuses, you can say, 'it's in a good cause, it's them or us, we're fighting for peace'-- fighting for peace, now _there's_ an oxymoron-- but you can say that, you don't have to feel guilty. I-- I have no excuse. I don't want to hurt anyone, I'm a _pacifist_, goddammit! I don't even like the fact that Jay has to fight-- but I remember killing, for _pleasure_! Or for petty annoyance, or for no reason at all! I killed-- I was responsible for _50 million_--" She couldn't go on. The horror of it hit her again and choked away her speech.

"You _should_ feel guilty," Ken said. He seemed to have softened slightly, ever so slightly. Then his eyes went hard and cold again. "But do you? Or are you making all this up to make me less suspicious?"

"No!"

"I should warn Joe about you. I should have done it a long time ago."

"No!" She grabbed his arms. "Don't, _don't_ tell him! Please, _don't_!" A sudden horrified vision of Jay remembering, his insane hatred of her awakening... "Jay's my life. If you tell him, I..."

"I don't trust you. Why should I care if something hurts you?"

"You..." Something shifted. This was not Ken, Jay's friend, she was dealing with. This was Gatchaman, the enemy, and one did not show weakness to enemies. She was handling this all wrong. Rage darkened her vision. "Jay's the only thing I have. If you take him away from me, I'll kill you, I swear," she said viciously.

Ken was not impressed. "From a pacifist to death threats. What's next? World conquest?"

The balance inside her shifted again, and she was filled with sudden horror at what she'd just said. She couldn't kill, couldn't threaten to kill-- something else had just said that. Some_one_ else. "You don't understand!" she wailed. "I live for Jay-- me, Kyla. But if you take him away-- if I have nothing left to live for, I might stop _being_ Kyla. I might become... someone else."

"Are you trying to blackmail me?"

"NO! I don't _want_-- why won't you understand? I never want to be what Berg Katse was! Don't you understand?" There were tears in her eyes. How could she reach him? How? "I'm human now. I can love, and feel, and weep like a human. Before-- before, I was a monster. I want to be human, please don't tell Jay I was ever a monster, please..."

Ken took a deep breath, and turned away from her slightly. "All right. I won't tell him. Not yet, anyway. But that's out of consideration for him, not you. I'm going to talk to Dr. Nambu tomorrow about what we should do with you, and I'm going to be watching you _very_ closely from now on."

"Fine. So watch me." She began gathering the pieces of the dossier and putting them back together. "I'm not planning on doing anything I need to hide from you."

* * *

On the drive home, she was conscious of Ken in the car behind her, watching her the whole way. She didn't want him there, she didn't want his suspicion and his hard hating eyes-- but how could she blame him? She would hate Berg Katse, too. She _did_. And she well remembered what an accomplished liar she'd been-- if she didn't know better, she wouldn't trust herself, either. In fact, remembering how she had suddenly wanted to kill him, back in the room, she wasn't sure how far she _could_ trust herself. And part of her felt it to be right that he was back there, that she was not trusted, because why should she deserve trust? Wasn't she a murderer? Wasn't the blood of millions on her hands?

"Where were _you_?" Jay asked incredulously when she got in.

She didn't see him as her murderer, her enemy. She had seen that flashback already. She remembered what he had been, and what he had done, but with a profound sense of relief she realized she could only see him as what he was now-- her husband, her love. "Doing some research," she said. "It ran later than I thought it would... You're not upset, are you?"

"That depends."

Tonight, of all nights, she needed him not to be upset with her. _Oh, please..._ "On what?"

He broke into a wide grin. "On how tired you are."

He didn't know. This was just a normal day for him. Nothing had changed. Kyla smiled back, feeling as she did so that she had almost forgotten how. This would be what she needed. "Oh, I don't feel _that_ tired..."

"Well, then I'm not upset."

When he embraced her, she clung to him desperately, as if it were the last time. The flashback returned, and she remembered holding onto him, dying, clinging to the enemy's warmth because it was all the warmth there would be... No. She wouldn't remember that. This was a time for life, not death. Drive out all the demons with the physical sensations, with the sacrament of love. Emotion welled up in her as they made love, and she felt almost as if this were the first time all over again. Berg Katse had been nothing remotely resembling a virgin, but Katse had never been _loved_, and never loved in return. Only Kyla had ever made love to anyone.

But if there was anything different about her behavior in bed, Jay didn't mention it. They fell asleep together afterward, in a tangle of arms and legs. And sleeping, Kyla dreamed...

__

Dying again, as Jay learned what she was, the laser gun he carried in practice pressed against her chest and a hole in her heart. Her love leaked out with her blood. He was wearing his costume and she was wearing hers, but without the mask. She took off his helmet and kissed him deeply as she drove a knife into his heart. Then she was dead, lying next to her lover and enemy, and the dead were all around her.

****

You killed us, they said.

****

It wasn't me, she pleaded. **It was Berg Katse!**

You did it. You. You!

She was in a Galactor base, wearing the costume and the mask. The mask was controlling her, was making her insane, and she-Kyla couldn't stop it. She-Katse reveled in the insanity, in the flames that consumed the world. Outside the base the world was on fire, innocent people burning at her command, and she heard herself laugh. **No! No, I don't want to be this, make me stop!** she pleaded, but the mask had her firmly controlled. But it wasn't the mask. It was herself-Katse, laughing and laughing, and she-Kyla couldn't make herself-Katse stop, or send the insane joy away, and she wept inside...

Some Galactors with no faces brought the Condor in as a prisoner. Her heart went out to him, beaten and bruised, and she was filled with love, but his eyes were filled with hate and so she-Katse knew he had to die. To protect themself. Kyla was a spectator in her own mind. She could only watch, screaming, as she ordered her beloved's death, and Jay's blood was streaming everywhere. Then he stood up, still covered with blood, and beckoned. "If you love me," he said. "If you love me, you'll do it."

"Do what?" she asked, but she already knew. And she loved him. So she stepped outside, into the firestorm, and burned.

Dead children, their eyes plucked out by crows, lay along the sides of broken roads. She walked and walked the roads, but could find only the dead. "Where is everyone?"

****

We're all dead. All of us dead.

"No, no, you can't be all dead, there must be someone left alive..."

"There is," Ken said, appearing out of nowhere with his boomerang out and a grim look on his face. "The avenging angel."

"I didn't mean to," she cried, and then the boomerang slit her throat.

She fell backwards, dying.

****

Perhaps it's better this way...

With a jerk, Kyla woke up.

It was 3 or 4 am. She was drenched in sweat, and no wonder. She had pulled all the covers off Jay and started to wrap them around herself. She hadn't done _that_ since-- since--

--Since she was Katse.

In the dark of the night, the guilt and fear in the dream returned to her. The memory of murder came a thousandfold, and she couldn't bear it. She tried to burrow into the covers to escape, but there was no way to escape guilt... No. There was a way. Whimpering, she crawled out of the covers, and laid them back on top of Jay, gently. She knew what she had to do, to silence the screams in her mind.

The unwieldiness of her body struck her again, and she remembered the child, sleeping inside her. Suddenly she wanted to weep with relief. That was her redemption-- the child would be her second chance, beautiful and happy and normal--

Normal? _Normal?_ Ice suddenly gripped her heart. She was a _mutant_. The reason she had always assumed she would be infertile was the fact that her cells had the wrong gene count. She had never thought she could breed with humans. But since she had-- well, even if the child lived past birth, it would be a mutant. A freak just like its mother. A monster just like she was. No redemption there.

Kyla sat back down on the bed heavily, causing Jay to mumble and turn over in his sleep. She looked down at him, and her heart broke. He was so beautiful, and she was so corrupt. Every time she had made love to him, it was as if she'd been bathing an angel in a cesspool. Inevitably he would remember-- it was the way her life worked-- and then all his love and concern would turn to poisonous hatred, and for good reason. Not even the child would help-- could the Condor love the freak child of Berg Katse? No, he deserved better than her. He would be happier when she was dead.

She dressed in silence, careful not to wake Jay. Outside she started her car and headed for the bridge. There were bridges all over Utoland. There had been a bridge when s/he was 17, too, and he'd nearly done it that time. Sosai X's self-announcement had spoiled things. This time she planned to do it right, and spare the world her further existence.

Burning tears rolled down her cheeks as she drove, making it difficult to see. She drove carefully, unwilling to embroil someone else in her private nightmare. She had hurt enough innocents without hitting someone's car. Fury at Dr. Kymel welled within her, for giving her a second chance she didn't deserve and could no longer bear to keep. Fury at Dr. Nambu, for not eliminating her right away and for making the slip that had given her the key to her memory. Fury at Ken, whose suspicions had made her feel she needed to know. But more than toward any of them, she felt fury at herself, at her monstrous existence. Better that she had never been born. Better that he had killed himself at 17, before ever hearing of Sosai X. Better that when the Condor had killed him, he'd stayed dead.

But she hadn't stayed dead, and so she had to rectify matters now. She parked out by the bridge, leaving the keys in the car. Maybe someone without a home, as she had been the last time he'd tried this, would find it and sell it for a place to live. The wind was very cold, though here in Utoland, it never got as cold as it had been the night he'd died, not even in winter at 4 am. The water would be cold, too. Good. Cold numbed quickly. There would be little pain. On the other hand, maybe she deserved pain. Maybe she should batter her head against the metal supports several times before she jumped, to ensure she suffered enough. No-- the hell she was going through now was enough. Better to end it quickly.

There was a police car moving slowly down the bridge. Kyla didn't care. She quickly stepped over the guard rail and onto the metal support strut. It rose in a rapid arch. She nearly lost her balance, but regained it quickly, still graceful and surefooted despite the slight unwieldiness of her body. Her death would come by choice, not accident. She climbed up and knelt on the arch, about 8 feet above the bridge and 100 above the water, looking down at the dark water. She had done this once before, at another bridge, so long ago. That time he hadn't jumped, in the end. This time she would finish the job.

"_Don't_!"

She turned, and saw a policeman on the walkway below her. She was just out of his reach. "Don't jump!" he shouted. "Please!"

How ironic. The police, trying to _save_ her life. Maybe she should have killed herself in costume. She stood up and looked down at him. "Why?" she asked bitterly.

"Listen, suicide's not the answer. Whatever you're going through, if you can just hang on long enough, it'll pass. But death is permanent. You--"

"No," she interrupted, "the trouble is that death isn't permanent enough. And this will never, ever pass. I'll _always_ deserve to die." She started to turn back.

"If you won't think of yourself, think of your baby!" Her clothing, thrown on hastily so she could go out and die, was not the kind designed to conceal pregnancy, and despite the cold she wasn't wearing a coat. "You're killing an innocent child if you kill yourself!"

"An innocent child?" Kyla began to laugh, a broken hysterical sound. "The child will be a _freak_, just like its damned mother! It's better off if it's never born. It would have been better if _I_ had never been born." She turned around and faced the river. Why did he have to come here and bother her in her last moments? If he knew who she was, he would be applauding her decision. It was time to get it over with. Kyla looked down at the black water, so far below. Then she stepped off the support.

A moment of vertigo, free fall and atavistic fear-- then something wrenched her arm, and pulled her hard back onto the bridge, falling over the guard rail and hard onto the concrete. She screamed, but the sound choked off as she hit the bridge, and the air went from her lungs. For a spinning moment she couldn't breathe. The baby had awakened at the blow, and stirred slightly in her stomach. _I can't even kill myself right_, she thought, and she wanted to cry.

"Why did you stop me?" she strangled out, acid burning in her words.

"It's my job. Suicide's against the law in Utoland, you know."

Kyla began to laugh hysterically. "What do you do to people who succeed?"

"Nothing. Obviously. But I'm not going to let anyone succeed if I can help it."

"You should have." She tried to get to her feet, but she was still too dizzy from hitting the concrete. "I don't deserve to live."

"Now why don't you let someone else be the judge of that?"

"Because everyone else will judge the same!" she spat at him. "I'm Berg Katse, I've killed millions, you would be doing the world a favor if you let me die!"

"The last time I heard, Berg Katse was dead already," the policeman said. "And male."

"I _am_--!!" She began to laugh, and it turned into wracking sobs. "Tell the truth and they don't _believe_ me..."

"I think I better take you down to the station, until you get yourself under control." He guided her to his car.

"Call Dr. Nambu! Call Nambu of ISO if you don't believe me! _He_ knows who I am-- he knows I deserve to die..."

* * *

The phone rang in Nambu's office at 8 am. Since he always came to work early, he was there to answer it. "Nambu here."

"This is Lieutenant Maccabee of the Utoland Police," an apologetic voice said. "We're terribly sorry to bother you so early in the morning, but..."

"Go right ahead."

"Well, we picked up this woman attempting to kill herself last night. She's in custody now, since we were afraid she would hurt herself, and she's pregnant. She claims she's, uh, Berg Katse, and that you will confirm her story. Do you know anything about this?"

A cold hand squeezed Nambu's heart. There was only one person that could be, but he had to check anyway. "A blonde woman? About 4 or 5 months pregnant?"

"Yes. You do know her?"

"That must be Kyla Samonetti," he said, half-sighing. Damn. She knew. Who told her-- or did she regain her memories? At least there was something hopeful; the fact that she'd tried to kill herself probably indicated that she wasn't the old Katse. "She's... had problems lately. One of our best, but she's been.. troubled, to say the least. Be gentle with her; she's really quite harmless. Wouldn't ordinarily hurt a fly. But now that she thinks she's murdered millions... well, she might do things she wouldn't ordinarily, because she might feel she has nothing left to lose. So be careful. I'll be right there."

* * *

Kyla had spent the night in a jail cell; a rather nice jail cell, certainly better than Galactor used to use, but a cell nonetheless, with a guard watching her by closed-circuit TV to be sure she didn't hang herself with her clothes or somesuch. Actually, since the light fixture was built into the ceiling, there was nothing to hang herself _from_; and while she had considered slamming her head against the wall, she knew instinctively she wasn't capable of killing herself that way. The police had left her her pills, on determining that they were a harmless hormonal medication, and she automatically took one toward morning. After swallowing it, she suddenly realized that she could kill herself simply by going without the pill. She knew, now, why Dr. Kymel had been so adamant she take them-- somehow Dr. Kymel had found a way to hold off the Change. If she Changed now, she and the child would both die horribly. Even knowing how awful such a death would be, her suicidal despair was so great that she attempted to consciously trigger the Change, but there was too much of the blocking hormone in her system.

At least Jay didn't know yet-- not unless Ken broke his promise and told him. When Kyla wasn't there this morning, he'd assume she'd gone to work early. She prayed he would never find out, at least not until she was dead. She was exhausted, but she dared not sleep, or the guilt would come to attack her in the form of nightmares again.

"Mrs. Samonetti?" It was a policeman, not the one who'd stopped her. "Dr. Nambu of ISO's here. He's going to take you into custody." He sounded slightly awed-- the great Dr. Nambu putting himself out for a mere employee? _If you'd believed me when I told you all who I was, you wouldn't be at all surprised,_ she thought. _I wonder if he brought the Science Ninja Team as guards? Oh please, oh please don't let him have brought Jay..._

She went with the policeman, and was surprised to see that Nambu had come alone. He had brought a gun, but he had come alone. If she had wanted to escape him, she could easily have disarmed him and killed him with it. Was this stupidity on his part? Did he truly think that would protect him from her? Or did he trust her enough to know she wouldn't attack him, even if he had come to execute her personally?

"Good morning, Kyla," he said. "I heard you tried to kill yourself."

"If _they_ hadn't interfered, I would've succeeded. You know why! I deserve it!"

"We'll have to discuss this," he said. "If I asked you to drive me back to ISO, could I trust you not to get us both killed?"

She went white. "Not you," she said. "I wouldn't kill _you_..."

"If I told you I was going to tell Jay who you were, would you be tempted to?'

Kyla couldn't breathe for a second. He was going to tell Jay! "Don't," she begged. "_Please_ don't. You can do what you like with me-- kill me, put me on trial, lock me away and throw away the key, whatever you want-- but _please_ don't tell him! It'll destroy him!"

The police were all covertly watching them. "Shh," Nambu said. "I didn't say I _would_ tell Jay. But _if_ I told you I would, would you try to kill me?"

Ken must have told him about the threat she made last night. But that had been a different, older self who'd said that. Kyla would never kill, not even to prevent the thing she feared most in all the world. "No," she whispered. "No, I'd just make sure I killed myself before I saw him again, after he knew. Whatever it took."

"All right, then," Nambu said. "I'd like you to drive me back-- and no, I'm _not_ going to tell Jay."

The morning sickness had mostly passed a month ago, but this morning the emotional trauma, lack of sleep, and fact that she hadn't eaten in hours combined to make Kyla feel faint and very nauseous. Sweat beaded her forehead. "I-- I'm not sure I can. I wouldn't trust my driving abilities right now."

"I'll do it," Nambu said, sighing. "I suppose it was too much to hope for. But you will come with me?"

"If I don't, will you shoot me?"

"Good God, no!" Nambu looked shocked. "Kyla, please-- just come with me?"

"All right," she said dully. She owed this to Nambu-- and there would always be other opportunities to kill herself. She could do it tonight, by not taking her pill and then triggering the Change. So she went with him.

In the car, Nambu asked, "What exactly did you think you were doing?"

"Killing myself. What did it look like?"

"Why?"

"You _know_ why," she snarled, almost a sob. "Let's not play games, Nambu. You and I both know what I've done. All the crimes I've committed, all the people I've slaughtered. Death's better than what I deserve!"

"You're right," Nambu said calmly. "Death is far, far less than what you deserve."

He was agreeing with her. Part of her was glad; another part cringed. So now even he hated her. Well, what did she expect? Didn't she deserve to be hated? "So why don't you let me do it?" she asked. "Or do you want to put me on trial and humiliate me before I die?"

"Why do you want to die?"

She was baffled by the question. "Because I deserve it!"

"You obviously didn't think you deserved to die when Joe shot you, or we wouldn't have found so much of _his_ blood on the snow with yours. When did you decide that you deserve death?"

"I-- I don't know. I learned--" She couldn't pinpoint the moment when she developed her conscience. It was as if it had already existed in her mind when she awakened and Dr. Kymel had dubbed her Kyla. "I don't know when I learned, but I understand right and wrong. What I did-- I'm evil, as evil as they come. By any standard of morality, I should be slaughtered like a dog. You understand, don't you?"

"I understand why some would think you deserve death. I wanted to see why _you_ thought so."

"Why 'some'? You just said I deserve to die!"

"I said death is less than what you deserve, if I remember correctly."

"Then what?" She went pale. "You think I should be tortured before I die?"

"Do _you_ think so?'

"I-- I--" Tears welled up in her eyes. "Probably," she whispered, fear in her voice. She wanted to die quickly and relatively painlessly-- she was very much afraid of pain-- but by the logic she once operated by, her crimes were too great for mere death to balance them.

"Even that would not be enough," Nambu said. "You killed 50 million people, Kyla." His voice was soft but relentless. "Could you ever suffer enough to make up for that? Could you suffer 50 million deaths?"

"I-- I can regenerate--"

"I know you can, but not that many times. Your lifespan isn't long enough to suffer commensurately for what you've done."

She began to sob. "Then what can I do? How can I pay? I've got to do _something_!"

"Why?"

"Because! I _deserve_--" She became too hysterical to speak clearly.

Nambu pulled into a deserted picnic spot. He parked the car, went around the side and helped Kyla out. She was still sobbing. He led her to a picnic bench, sat her down, and sat down across the table from her, looking directly at her. Slowly she got herself back under some semblance of control, and he waited until then before speaking.

"Listen, Kyla. You're looking at this the wrong way. Considering your background, I can hardly blame you, but you can save yourself a lot of heartache if you think about things differently." He moved his head back slightly, distancing himself from her ever so slightly. "By the law of an eye for an eye, don't you now owe 50 million lives?"

"I don't _have_ 50 million lives!"

"No, you don't. Which means that your death would be terribly unjust. You'd be getting off lightly, escaping the justice you deserve. Am I right?"

"But what else can I do?" she wailed. "What else can I do?"

"Well. If you owe 50 million lives, and you haven't got your own to give, it's obvious. You must _save_ 50 million lives."

"_How_?" she demanded. "Put on a cape and become Superman?"

"By working for me. Let me ask you something else, Kyla. In the old days, you used to routinely risk your life to avoid capture. Why was that?"

"I don't see the point to this--"

"You're stubbornly avoiding seeing the point. A person of your intelligence should easily be able to see where I'm going. Answer the question. Aside from wanting to avoid humiliation, was there any other reason you would risk your life to escape?"

"Sosai had standing orders that if I were captured and I couldn't be rescued, I was to be killed."

"And why was that?"

"Because I--" Kyla said, and stopped. Abruptly she _did_ see where this was going. "...knew too much..."

"Exactly." Nambu leaned forward. "Now more than ever you can be invaluable to us, Kyla. Two days ago you were equally as guilty of your crimes; but now that you remember them, you're much better equipped to atone for them. You have all of Berg Katse's knowledge. Before, Galactor killed 50 million; this time they'll kill just as many or more if they can. But you can stop them. With what you know, you can help us nip them in the bud, before they can begin their program of terrorism."

She hardly dared hope. "Everything I know is out of date," she said uncertainly.

"Do you really think they could have changed _everything_? Not only the codes and passwords, but the location and layout of all the bases, the plans for the mecha you never had time to build, all the top-level personnel... Certainly there will be additions and subtractions, but a vast portion of Galactor business is likely to still be the same. Besides which, you know Sosai X better than anyone."

At the mention of X's name, a bitter fury rose within Kyla. It was all _his_ fault. He had created her and warped her to commit all those crimes. "Oh, yes," she said bitterly. "I know Sosai quite well."

"Then help us fight him. That's the only way you can ever make up for your crimes."

Nambu's words had a relentless logic to them. Even if she tried to find a flaw, a reason why she had to die, she could find none. She didn't have to die to atone. It was as if a dark cloud around her soul was blowing away. She didn't have to die.

Perversely, tears blurred her vision again. "I'm such a fool," she mumbled, fumbling in her pocket for a Kleenex. "Crying like this all the time."

"You've been very distraught," Nambu said. "And I'm sure your pregnancy doesn't help maintain an emotional equilibrium. Here." He handed her his handkerchief, and she blew her nose noisily. "As for your child... well, I don't understand how you could have been fertile with a human. But it happened, and you can't regret it. The police told me you said your child would be a freak, but you can't know that, not until it's born. And if it is abnormal in some respect, we will help you take care of it, and pay for any surgeries necessary to give it as normal a life as possible. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"Yes," she said, wiping her face and trying to keep from sobbing again. "If I can help you, I can pay it all back. I don't _have_ to die, and neither does the baby... oh, thank you, thank you..."

"I'm glad you feel better," Nambu said, and smiled slightly. "Now. Do you want to go home, or would you rather come in to work?'

"Work," she said unhesitatingly. She blew her nose again, wiped the last tears away, and spoke in a firm voice again for what seemed like the first time in a minor eternity. "We've got a lot of ground to cover, so we'd better get started."


	6. Chapter 5

__

Aite Chp. 5

At 10 that morning, Ken went and knocked on Nambu's door.

"Who is it?"

"It's me," Ken said.

There was a delay of a few moments, and then Nambu opened the door. He'd obviously been working-- there were papers everywhere. "Ah, yes. Ken," he said. "Exactly whom I wanted to see. Do you have something to tell me?" He was standing with his arms folded, looking at Ken with eyes that were somehow very stern. Was he angry with Ken? Why?

"As a matter of fact, yes, I do," Ken said, getting slightly defensive. "Kyla remembers who she is. She broke into the Records Room and looked up Berg Katse's past history. Doctor," he blurted, as Nambu showed no reaction, "don't you think it was stupid to give her a position of so much trust?" Still no reaction. "She remembers who she is. She's Berg Katse! Doctor, don't you _care_?"

"Last night," Nambu said, "Kyla attempted to throw herself off the Carlin Bridge."

"What?" Ken's eyes widened.

"She was rescued by the police, and held in protective custody until this morning, when I went to pick her up. To say she was distraught would be an understatement. She was consumed with guilt, weeping hysterically, and insisting that she should die for her crimes. Tell me, Ken, is this the sort of thing you remember Berg Katse doing?"

"Well, no, but--"

"She explained to me, once she was somewhat calmer, that two things had led her to seek out knowledge of who she was. The first was a slip of the tongue on my part, two months ago, in which I speculated that Gel Sadra might be a hermaphrodite. The second was the continual suspicion she felt from the entire Science Ninja Team, excluding Joe, of course, but most especially from you. When she looked up hermaphrodites in the computer and got Berg Katse's name, she told me, she didn't want to explore the matter any fur- ther-- but she had to, she felt, because she had to know how to combat your suspicion of her."

Ken swallowed. So _this_ was why Nambu was angry at him. "Well, what was I supposed to do?" he asked, very defensive now. "It would've been stupid to trust her completely--"

"Of course. But it was also _extremely_ stupid--" Nambu's voice rose to a controlled shout-- "for you to grab her, hound her, repeatedly accuse her of wanting to destroy us all, and in general make her believe that _you_ are convinced she is evil! After you attacked her in the air vents, you destroyed any chance that she would believe the story I told her in the beginning, that she simply reminded you of a Galactor. Over and over, you showed her that either you were a paranoid fool, or she _was_, in fact, a Galactor. she would probably have preferred to believe you a paranoid fool, but the man she loves is your best friend, and did _his_ best to convince her that you are a good and sensible man. Which for someone of her intellect led to the inescapable conclusion that she had been a Galactor. And then, when she found out the truth about herself, you tore her apart. Didn't I _tell_ you not to act suspicious?"

"But Doctor! She could be dangerous!"

"She could be. And I was not asking you to tell all your secrets to her. I've had her computer accesses kept under constant monitor. The only information she has access to is what we know about Galactor; names of our agents, locations of our bases, and so forth, are all beyond her clearance level. If she were to run off to Galactor today and tell them all she knows, the only thing she can give them, aside from your identities, is the knowledge of how much _we_ know. As for knowing your identities, there really wasn't much that could be done about that-- there was no way to bring Jay back into the team and keep it secret from her. I did not and will not blindly trust her, Ken-- she's under the same surveillance everyone with access to sensitive information is under, no more and no less. But you must learn, one cannot make a person more trustworthy by treating them as if they could turn traitor any minute. We're all very fortunate that when she _did_ learn her identity, she turned the anger and resentment at your mistrust against herself rather than against you or ISO. _You_ could have driven her back to Galactor. You very nearly did drive her to suicide."

"_I_ nearly drove her to suicide?"

"I'm sure what you did to her didn't help stabilize her any. Ken, you _must_ realize. Kyla's mind-- is fragile. We should know that already. Berg Katse was thoroughly insane. Kyla is not-- but we know that the tendency is in her. We should be protecting her, not attacking her, because if she destablizes again, the _best_ that could happen is what happened last night. And the worst doesn't bear thinking about. I've said it before and I'll say it again: _don't_ treat her like an enemy, Ken, because then she will see _you_ as an enemy-- and we may lose her to madness again." He sighed. "In any case, it's done now. I want to talk to the other three about this, but not Jay for obvious reasons. Can you think of a plausible reason to exclude him when I summon the others in?"

"Why obvious reasons?"

"Because learning that Jay was Condor Joe didn't restore either of their memories. But learning that she was Berg Katse restored Kyla's. I'm afraid that if Jay learns that, he will regain his memories--"

"What would be wrong with that?"

"Joe hated Katse, Ken. And Jay loves Kyla. Can you imagine what it would do to him to have a conflict like that in his mind?"

"Right." Ken shuddered. "Maybe if you were briefing us on a change in procedure from last time, and since he doesn't remember the way we used to do it..."

"Mmm. That's more fragile than I like. I'll think of something." Nambu began to pace. "When I picked Kyla up this morning, as I've said, she felt she deserved to die for her crimes, and nothing else could absolve her. I persuaded her that on the contrary, the only way she can make amends is to actively help us. Admittedly, things have changed since her time. But now she possesses all of Berg Katse's memories, while retaining Kyla's personality. I believe she can be trusted to help us. So I'm going to increase her security clearance and have her work directly with some of the agents."

"Are you sure that's wise?" Ken asked, his eyes wide.

"Yes." Nambu turned to Ken. "Her memories are back. If anything could cause her to fall back into the old patterns, that would do it. Instead, she feels guilt over them, to the point where she wants to kill herself." He began to pace again. "Now from the journals I've obtained, Berg Katse did occasionally suffer bouts of suicidal depression-- however, these were triggered by loneliness and self-pity, _not_ guilt. I don't think Katse was capable of guilt.

"There's another thing. I've long had reason to believe Galactor brainwashes its members. I don't mean that it turns them into zombies with no free will-- I mean it takes ordinary people, people with some good and some bad in them, as we all do, and trains them, conditions them so that the good is suppressed and the bad is made to flourish. How else could mercernaries be persuaded to kill themselves for such a corrupt organization?"

"Are you trying to say Katse was brainwashed?"

"I've talked to people who knew Katse as a child, though not by that name. There are conflicting reports, but several have said she was a good, quiet child, even sweet. Somewhere between childhood and adulthood Katse changed, terribly. And yes, I think she was brainwashed. Galactor-- or rather, Sosai X-- conditioned her to suppress the good, enhance the evil. It wouldn't have been difficult-- Katse was desperately eager to please X, and had never been raised with a strong moral sense to begin with.

"I'm not saying this excuses her crimes. Far from it. What I am saying is that Katse wasn't born evil. She was twisted, perverted into that shape by Sosai X. By giving her amnesia, Teriani was obviously able to deprogram her, to recover the good that may have been in her once. Kyla may be Katse, but she's not the Katse we remember. She's not insane, she has great respect for human life, she hates Galactor and Sosai X, and she loves Joe. Instead of being constantly suspicious and fearful that she might slip back, we should recognize that she's been cured, and we should be happy for her and thankful for the world's sake."

Ken sighed. "I _did_ feel sorry for him-- for her-- once."

"There's no need to now. There's no need to fear her, either. With Kyla's help, we may be able to smash Galactor before it can do anything." He walked to the door. "Get the others one at a time, spaced about ten minutes apart. Tell them I want to talk to them one at a time, Jay last. We'll have our discussion once everyone but Jay is here, and then when I call him in separately I'll discuss something innocuous."

"All right." Ken left.

* * *

Jay had noticed that nobody who left came back. First Jun went with Ken. Then Jinpei was summoned, before Jun had returned, and then Ryu, before either of them had come back. If he was inclined to be a bit more paranoid, it looked suspiciously like the others were having some kind of meeting without him. Especially since he had already had to wait longer than any of the others had, and there was still no sign of Ken coming to get him.

A truly wicked thought occurred to him, and he grinned. Kyla wasn't the only Samonetti who knew how to be sneaky. Leave him out, would they? Well, he'd just practice his stealth and espionage maneuvers, then. He transmuted to Bird Style and slipped out of the training room, following on shadows, crawling on the ceiling, until he arrived just outside Dr. Nambu's office.

* * *

"Now that all of you are here," Nambu began, as Ryu arrived, and was interrupted by Jinpei.

"Joe's not here."

"No, he's not. What we have to discuss is not for him to hear; that's why I claimed to be meeting with you separately." Nambu opened the side door from his office. "Kyla, come in," he said.

The three Science Ninjas stared as Kyla came into the room, wondering. What was Dr. Nambu going to say?

"Last night," Nambu said, "Kyla regained her memories." Shocked looks. "For various reasons, I have become satisfied that she no longer thinks like Berg Katse, and that she sincerely wants to help us."

"How can you be sure?" Jinpei asked.

Kyla looked at him. "Jinpei, did you ever do something you were ashamed of? So terribly, horribly ashamed that you would give your life if you could just reverse time and prevent yourself from doing it?"

"I think we all must have," Jun said, tactfully not mentioning that what Kyla had to be ashamed of was considerably greater than anything any of them could muster up.

"That's how I feel. I-- you don't know how horrible it is, to remember-- doing... those things. If I could go back in time and shoot myself before I did it, I would. But I can't, so the only thing I _can_ do is destroy Galactor, with what I know about it, to prevent this from happening again."

"Well, talk's cheap," Jinpei said.

"Yes, it is. Especially coming from me, I can understand how you feel." Kyla sat down on one of the couches, as they all looked at her, encircling her. "I tried to kill myself last night."

Jun gasped. Ryu said, horrified, "But what about your baby?"

"I figured it would be a freak like me, and better off dead. Some police stopped me, and Dr. Nambu talked me out of it. I don't have the _right_ to kill myself, you see. I have to use my knowledge to stop Sosai X, to atone for what I've done."

"_Excuse_ me," came an angry voice from outside the door, "but was I _ever_ going to be told any of this?"

Jay stepped through the door in Bird Style, looking furious. Kyla went white, and stood up, looking ready to bolt, with one hand placed protectively over her stomach and the other to her face. "Jay..." 

Jun stepped in front of her, and Ken got between the angry Condor and his wife. "What're you doing up here? You were supposed to wait!"

"I got bored. And I'm sick of getting left out. Besides, I'm glad I disobeyed. Exactly when was I going to be told that my wife tried to kill herself?"

"How much did you hear?" Kyla asked woodenly.

"Oh, I heard enough, and I'm pissed about it. If you got _your _memories back, maybe I'm going to get mine, too. Maybe I'd like to know that. Anyone think of that?"

"Jay," Nambu said sharply. "There was a reason I didn't want you here--"

"Yeah, you didn't want me to know Kyla used to be Berg Katse. That's the big secret you've all been tiptoeing around for two months, trying to keep me and Ky from finding out, and now that Ky remembers you don't want _me_ to know, because it's so horrible, right? You wanna know something? I. Don't. Care. I don't _give_ a damn who Kyla used to be, unless it's hurting her now. And I'm sick of you people trying to keep secrets from me!"

"You mean that?" Kyla said. "That you don't care?" She pushed past Jun and Ken and went to Jay. "I-- I told them not to tell you. I was afraid you-- you would--" She bit her lip. It looked like she might start crying again.

Jay gathered her to him and enfolded her in his cape, so that only her legs and head on his shoulder were visible. "Hang on," he whispered. "We'll talk about it later. Get a hold of yourself first." He knew the last thing she would want would be to break down in front of the team.

"Thanks," she whispered back.

Ken said, "We were afraid you would hate her and want her dead if you knew. You used to have an obsessive hatred of Berg Katse."

"Yeah, well, in case you hadn't noticed, I used to be obsessive about a lot of things. I'm not anymore." He looked around at them all. "Listen, guys. You're all thinking of me as Joe still, but I'm not really. I'm Jay Samonetti now, and I don't want the knid of life Joe had. I want the good stuff he had in his life, but I don't want his obsessions. I don't want to go around full of anger and hate all the time like he did. I like myself fine the way I am now. I'll kick Galactor butt, all right, but I want to do it because they're assholes and they need their butts kicked, not because I feel like I have to do it for my parents or something."

Ken abruptly grinned. "Years, I've been telling him this. _Years_. It takes _amnesia_ to make it sink in."

"What can I say? I've got a thick skull." 

Everyone laughed, even Kyla, who moved back from him slightly. "I'm okay now," she whispered. "Thanks."

"Good." Jay didn't release her completely, though-- he held her still cradled in one arm, one wing draped over her shoulders, to emphasize his claim on her. She was his, and he wanted all of them to know that. The past was never going to change that.

Nambu explained to them that Kyla would begin giving them information from the past, knowledge about Galactor and Sosai X that they could use to destroy Galactor before it got started. Then he let Kyla tell them about X.

"I don't know everything-- Sosai never exactly sat me down and told me stories about his childhood. What I do know is that he's not native to this world at all. He's not our form of life at all, either. Sosai is an energy being, with control over electromagnetism. He houses himself in a golden spaceship, which used to be under the Cross Karakoram mountain range, I don't know where it is now. This spaceship has the ability to teleport."

"Can it teleport people? Such as you?" Ken asked.

"Or giant ape mecha?" Jinpei asked.

Kyla winced slightly. Even though she could no longer sympathize with her memories, it was still embarrassing to remember being brought down by Jinpei, of all people. "If you're talking about that time in the Himalayas, yes, he teleported me and the ape mecha. We were within 136 miles of Cross Karakoram, and therefore of him, that's how he did it. He can ionize the air to generate a 3-dimensional image of his icon--"

"His icon?"

"What he chooses as his representation. The flame being with the glowing eyes was just an image he used to represent himself, not what he really looked like. At any range, he can create the icon hologram, as long as it's near one of his power nexii. I used to build the nexii into all the bases, and likely Gel Sadra does too. However, he can only teleport someone when they're within 136 miles or so of him."

"Was he within that range when we unmasked you in Utoland?" Ken asked.

"No. That's why he didn't teleport me-- I ran. He generated an icon to cover my escape. He also had limited telepathy--"

"Mindreading?" Ryu asked, wide-eyed, and Jinpei shivered, saying, "He can't read _our_ minds, can he?"

"If you'd let me finish-- as far as I _know_, he could only communicate with me, and then it was a very directed exchange of thought. He couldn't read my mind, but he could read the messages I projected at him, and send messages back. We usually only did this in an emergency, since it gave me a splitting headache and apparently wasn't terribly pleasant for him, either. He may have the same ability with Gel Sadra. He can also take over machinery in areas where he has a nexus, and he manipulates magnetic fields on a very intense scale at his core."

"What _is_ he, precisely?" Nambu said. "You said, not native to this world."

"No. He comes from the planet Selectro, in the Andromeda galaxy, and they sent him here to conquer Earth. That's all _I_ know. I'd wager that's all Gel Sadra knows, too."

"How can we destroy him?" Ken asked.

Kyla shook her head. "You can't," she said. "As far as I know, you can't."

* * *

The discussion lasted a few more hours, Kyla telling all of them things they'd never known about Galactor. Then Kyla went to work with Nambu and some Intelligence people, telling everything she could remember, while Jay went to pick Kyla's car up off the side of the bridge-- miraculously, it was still there-- and then returned to continue training. It wasn't until rather late that they both got off work and Jay drove Kyla home, since he'd delivered her car to their house. 

"It really doesn't bother you?" she asked. "Who I used to be?"

"Why should it?" Jay asked practically. "I don't remember that person. Far as I know, you are who you've always been."

"Even the fact that I was once male-- that doesn't bother you?"

"Well, you're not a man _now_, are you?"

Kyla looked down at her swollen breasts and rounded belly. "Somehow it doesn't look that way," she murmured. 

"Well then. Why _should_ I care? I mean, yeah, if you turned into a man right now, I admit it'd bug the hell out of me. But that's what you take those pills for, right?"

"Right," Kyla said. It was suddenly sinking in that she'd never be a man again. Before she'd gotten her memories back, she hadn't known what she was missing. And since then, she'd had other things on her mind. But now, she fully realized that she would never, ever be male again. That part of her life was gone forever, and it saddened her somewhat. As a child, she would have given anything to be one or the other, forever. After becoming sexually mature, however, she had discovered advantages to the duality of her nature, and it came with a sense of loss to give them up.

On the other hand, she wasn't really sacrificing anything she hadn't chosen to sacrifice. She'd known for a very long time that she was bisexual-- marrying Jay hadn't made her blind, and she could appreciate the charms of both men and women when she looked at them. But she had willingly ignored her attraction to women, as she'd ignored her attraction to any men but Jay, because he was the one she loved and she wanted to be faithful to him. It was the same principle here. What she would miss was having sex as a man-- nothing else was really that different between phases to miss it. And since the only partner she ever planned to have was Jay, who was relentlessly, completely and totally straight, there would never be any point to being a man. The happiness she felt with Jay far outweighed the sense of loss. If the price for happiness, sanity and love was her manhood, so be it-- it was a small enough price to pay. She leaned on Jay's shoulder.

"It really doesn't matter to you," she said. 

"Nope. Not a bit."

"Lots of men would be bothered if their wife had ever been a man."

"Well, they're dickheads. Right _now_ is all that matters, and right now you are an incredibly beautiful and sexy woman--"

"Why, thank you."

"--who just happens to be married to the hottest stud in Utoland." Jay grinned widely.

Kyla grinned back and unbuckled her seat belt. "Okay, Mr. Hot Stud, you asked for it," she said, moved over, and proceeded to nuzzle his ear. He didn't protest until she slid her hand onto his leg.

"Hey, stop that. I'm driving!"

"You don't _really_ want me to stop, do you?" she purred in his ear.

"I don't want to get us both killed, either!" 

"Oh, I trust your driving skill."

Jay couldn't pull away from her or push her off without being more forceful and unpleasant than he really wanted to be. "Dammit, Kyla, do you know what you're doing to me?" he moaned.

"Oh, yes," she purred. Her hand slid all the way up his leg. "I know _exactly_ what I'm doing to you."

"That's it," he growled, spinning the wheel and pulling into an empty parking lot. He parked and turned the ignition off. "You could have waited until we got home, to a nice soft bed, but no, _you_ couldn't wait, could you?"

"No, I couldn't," she said, grinning. She pressed a button and moved the front seat as far back as it would go, away from the steering wheel. "What are you going to do about it?"

He didn't bother answering her-- merely grinned ferally at her, slid over and grabbed her, proceeding to smother her with kisses as they both started losing articles of clothing. When he finally came up for air, he whispered in her ear, hoarsely, "So soft... you're so much softer nowadays. Much nicer. I think you're sexy when you're pregnant, Ky, I'm going to have to keep you this way all the time."

Kyla tweaked his nose. He tweaked hers back, which resulted in a mock wrestling match, which led to other joint endeavors, and in the end it was a _long_ time before they reached home.

* * *

A week later Nambu stood in front of an unassuming front door, contemplating an encounter of a different nature with _his_ wife.

He, Kyla and some of the top-ranking people in Intelligence had been working hard all this week, getting names and locations and the plans to bases. Kyla had inside information on most of the people they had confirmed as Galactor captains, knew everything there was to know about Selina Marriochio, who was Galactor's Executive Scientist and the only high-ranking female besides Gel Sadra left in the organization, and could break into several of Galactor's databases. She said her personal code might work still, and that would get her in anywhere, but she was very reluctant to use it, as it would identify her beyond doubt to Sosai X. She knew lesser codes that were still useful, however, and using them they had pirated a great deal of information from Galactor. In a few weeks, Nambu hoped, they would have enough to make a series of lightning strikes that would destroy Galactor completely.

But Kyla had gone on break for the weekend, as had the Science Ninja Team-- they needed days off on occasion, or they'd burn out. So Nambu had decided to take the weekend off, too, for once. There was something he had to do.

He knocked at the door of the address Kyla had given him. A young man answered, and a lump caught in Nambu's throat. He _knew_ that young man-- or had known him, 10 years ago.

Was this how Red Impulse felt, seeing Ken for the first time in 12 years? But then, Kentaro had chosen to leave. And Kentaro had not believed his son to be dead...

"Hello?" the young man said.

__

He doesn't know me, Nambu thought, and it wrenched at his heart. But he had come for a different purpose today. The reunion with David would wait. "I'd like to see your mother. Is she in?"

"I'll have to check. Can I have your name?"

Nambu almost smiled. _Oh, no, Teriani. You don't fool me that easily_. "David, you know perfectly well that she's in. My name is Kozaburo Nambu of the ISO, and I've come to see her. Where is she?"

David stood his ground. "What makes you think she's in?"

"You would have said she wasn't if not. You're screening unwanted visitors. A commendable job, but I have the right to see her if anyone does. Where is she?"

"How did you know my name?"

__

Because I'm your father. "I was acquainted with your mother once," Nambu said. "I'm not going to hurt her, David, but she's made a man I trained amnesiac and I want to know why. _Now_. Where is she?"

"Downstairs in the lab," David said defeatedly. He tagged along as Nambu searched for and located the staircase, but after Nambu glared at him, he stopped before going down the stairs and waited at the top as Nambu descended.

The lower level was a different world-- almost literally. The technology covering the walls had the crystalline precision and beauty of pure Keiraine tech. Things like the Bird Styles, the Firebird effect, those were bastard hybrids of Keirai and Earth. They worked, but much of the original beauty was gone.

"Teriani," Nambu called, in a language he had mostly forgotten. "Ki arrath?" Where are you?

There was a startled cry from around a corner. Nambu turned, rounded the corner, and saw her, looking hardly older than the day she'd-- well, obviously, she _hadn't_ died. The day whatever had happened had happened. The day he'd thought she was gone forever.

"Lareem and Keylen," she swore, pale, her hand pressed to her mouth. "It _wasn't_ a hallucination. That was you."

"Yes," he said quietly, looking at her. Drinking her in. She was just as beautiful as she had been then-- small, with what looked like an Asian cast to her features, except that her cheekbones were high and the epicanthic folds were on the wrong side of her eye. Her skin was paler than it had been, with a faint sallow tinge to it-- her melanin, her skin pigment, was gold, not brown, and when she tanned she turned a gloriously impossible gold, like wheat or golden metal. She hadn't been in the sun much lately, though, he could see. Her hair was straight and black, with the faintest tinge of blue to it, and her eyes were as black as a starless night. And she looked no older than 30. The serum she'd given him, years ago, meant that he looked 40, now that he was 50. But she herself had aged only about 5 or 6 apparent years in the 20-odd since they'd first met. She'd looked young then, and she looked impossibly young now.

"Teriani," he said. "We need to talk."

Her face was blank, which he knew to mean defensiveness. "About what?"

__

About you, and why you did these things. "About Jay and Kyla", he said.

"Oh, yes. I heard they were settling in nicely," she said, her face taking on a cheerful, relieved aspect. Her face lied. She was as taut as piano wire.

"When was the last time you talked to them?"

"Two weeks ago, when Jay came in for a check-up."

"Ah. Things have changed since then. Kyla's regained her memories."

The color drained out of Teriani's face, and she looked sick at heart. Nambu knew well she could have hidden that-- made her face go blank and calm, or acted unconcerned. The fact that she hadn't meant that she wanted him to see her emotion. She was trying to manipulate him. The emotion was real, but she was using it. "Why?" she asked.

"She did some research on hermaphrodites, came up with Katse's name, and looked him up. That triggered the memories."

"What then?"

"She tried to kill herself."

"Good," Teriani said, visibly relaxing. Nambu's eyes narrowed.

"'Good'?"

"You know what I mean, Kozaburo," she sighed. "You said 'tried'. She _didn't_ kill herself, or you would have said so. And the fact that she tried, as opposed to trying to kill you, or me, means the conditioning held. Is she all right now?"

"Yes." There was a moment of awkward silence. "Why did you do it?"

"Do what?"

A thousand things he could be asking. "Why did you save them?" he asked, but that wasn't it. That wasn't the real question.

"They were dying," she said, deliberately misunderstanding. "I had to."

"Why amnesia? That _was_ your doing, I take it."

"Well, what do you think?"

"I think the odds against it happening by accident are so ludicrously high that it had to be you."

"I'll defer to your judgement on that one," she said, a smile in her eyes.

"Why amnesia?"

"The fastest way to heal them."

He knew she didn't mean their bodies. "What was wrong with Joe?"

Teriani stood up, lifted a string of beads off the terminal, and began to spin it around her finger as she paced, without looking at him. "I have a device that permits me to read someone's mind," she began.

"I remember it distinctly."

"I thought you might. Normally, as I'm sure you remember, the sharing is 2-way. When sharing an unconscious man's mind, that doesn't happen. I used the device to read Joe and Katse as they lay unconscious in my laboratory. Let me tell you how they died."

"Which reminds me-- what were you doing at a Galactor base in the first place?"

"An associate of mine and I were attempting to gather information on Sosai X, and that was one of their main bases. I believe you thought it might be their headquarters."

"Yes. Kyla now says their headquarters used to be in the Cross Karakoram mountains, in the Himalayas."

"Well, we were there because we thought Sosai X might be there, and we found Joe and Katse. My associate helped me with the cybernetizing surgeries on Joe; Katse needed only minimal surgical intervention, since X had built the ability to regenerate into him. I kept them unconscious after I'd saved them, and I probed their minds.

"Joe was consumed with hate. Always consumed with hate. It raged inside, it never gave him a respite. He lived for his hate. Much of it was focused onto Katse, who actually had had nothing to do with the deaths of his parents, but Katse was a powerful visible symbol of everything he hated about Galactor, and it burned within him. He wanted Katse dead. So when Katse was torturing Ken, he snapped. The plan had been to blow up Katse's escape ship and take him captive--"

"I remember. Those were _my_ orders."

"--but Joe didn't care anymore. He followed Katse through the labyrinth of escape passages and out into the snowy night. Then he shot Katse in the chest with his cablegun.

"Katse would have bled to death in a matter of minutes anyway, if Joe had just let him alone to die. But Joe's hate wouldn't let him do that. He had to savor Katse's death, squeeze out every last drop of it. So he reeled Katse in, hauled him to his feet, and gloated at him. Katse proceeded to gut him, to slice open his abdomen with the last of his strength. Then they both collapsed.

"And the last thing Joe thought was that he was _glad_. He was glad to be dying this way, to go down taking Katse out. It was a noble sort of death, and it would finally put an end to the hate. The burning within him was almost more than he could bear. He had wanted to die for some time-- maybe that's why he took a risk like that. And his body was damaged, falling apart on him already. His face was known to Galactor. He was suffering from brain trauma. He wanted to _die_ for his hate, to quiet the demons in him."

Now she turned her dark eyes on Nambu and spoke with a chill in her voice. "Tell me, Kozaburo, what sort of monster twists a boy so he can only be free of his hate in death?"

The words were a knife, and he was bleeding and gutted as Joe must have been, watching himself die. He knew why she had done it, though-- she was fearful and defensive, deflecting the question he hadn't put into words yet. She was hurting, so she had struck first. And no, he was not infinitely understanding-- he would stab her back, but later. If he did it now, it would be revenge, and escalate into war. Later, he could use it to remind her she had as many weak points as he did. He breathed deeply, knowing she had seen his blood on her knife. "I didn't twist him, Teriani. Galactor did that when they murdered his parents. I would have had to brainwash him to eliminate the hate."

"Perhaps he'd've been happier brainwashed."

"Obviously _you_ thought so."

"So you let him live with that rage, eating him alive?"

"I had to use the weapons given me. He hated Galactor. I needed someone to fight Galactor. I tried to get him to tone himself down-- I _tried_. But if I'd done all I could have done, his effectiveness as a fighter might have been destroyed."

"Lareem and Keylen forbid."

"You _know_ why he had to fight, Teriani. You know what he was fighting."

"Yes. Better than you, I think."

"That means--?"

She ignored the question. "But I'm a doctor, a healer. Not a fighter. I wanted to heal him."

"Why couldn't you have told us he was alive?"

"If you were a doctor and received as a patient a child who'd been abused, would you patch him up and send him home to be abused again? Or would you take him away from the abusive family, even if it hurt them?"

Another stab wound. "I'm not a child abuser, Teriani."

"No, Kozaburo, you're a dedicated and ruthless man. Far more ruthless than I could ever be."

'That's right," he said coldly. "I play with people's lives. You only play with their minds."

Her face blanked. He had hurt her. He could see the blood. "I saved him from pain."

"And made him fall in love with his enemy."

"_Made_ him?" She shook her head slightly. "As it happened, Katse was male when Joe killed him, and so regenerated as a woman. A man and a woman, amnesiac together--"

"Who've been told they died in each other's arms."

"That was the truth. They did."

"But the reason was hatred, not love."

"Hatred is very close to love," she said softly. "The other person is constantly in your thoughts. All your plans revolve around your next meeting. You hunger to see the other again, so you can hurt and kill them. You analyze what the other does and says constantly. It's very close. Besides, Katse was strongly attracted to Joe and always had been, and Joe was grateful to Katse for killing him. Not consciously, no, he'd've denied it till the end of time and believed the denials. But it was there." She looked at him hard. "Those who are not capable of hate aren't truly capable of love, Kozaburo."

That comment hadn't been referring to Jay or Kyla. "Is that what you think? Do you have so narrow a vision of love?" he asked, anger tingeing his voice. _Perhaps the two of us are more like Jay and Kyla than I ever thought. My partner, my opponent; is this love or war we're engaged in now? Or both?_

"Is that all you wanted to know?"

"No." _Of course not. I've been asking a question for the past half hour and you still haven't answered it._ "What did you do to Katse to make her Kyla?"

She relaxed. This was straight information, not charged with the undercurrents of unspoken questions. "Her kind-- Gemini Linkages-- have very malleable minds. That's why creatures like Sosai X use them, because they can easily be-- influenced. Brainwashed. Programmed. Conditioned. I used that to implant deep subconscious commands-- roughly, the Ten Commandments. Thou shalt not kill, steal, or covet thy neighbor's husband if thou hast a perfectly good husband of thy own. On major issues, she's very moral. Not much for obeying other people's rules, mind you, but the rules in her own head govern her behavior."

"But you programmed those rules. She has no real free will."

Teriani sighed. "She never did, Kozaburo, not like we do. She was created and sculpted to a single purpose. Her entire early life was shaped so she would be vulnerable to X-- laying down the foundation so he could twist her later. All of us are shaped by our lives and circumstances, Geminis no less so. They're designed to be programmable people, but if no one programs them they program themselves with the random flotsam of their lives, the same as we do. The trouble is that if they're not given the opportunity to do that in childhood, they lose the ability to do it. Or at least, to do it as freely as human children do it. A human being-- a Gemini Linkage-- isn't a computer. You can't erase a program and leave them with nothing. The only way to get rid of something is to first erase the previous program, then plant another on top. If I had just given Katse amnesia, she would have drifted back into the old patterns from force of habit, most likely. She had to be specifically reprogrammed with a moral sense, or the deprogramming wouldn't take. Free will just wasn't a choice. The only choice was in the motive of the programmer, and _I_ wanted her to be happy."

"Oh, I'm not saying I disapprove of what you did with Kyla. I would have been ready enough to kill Katse or shatter his mind into very tiny fragments to prevent his evil. The fact that you were actually able to redirect his-- well, her-- talents toward good is a far superior solution. That's not the problem."

She didn't ask what the problem was, then. They both knew what the problem was.

"But what I want to ask," Nambu said, "is why didn't you tell us Jay was alive? I know you think he was miserable as Joe and so you had to give him amnesia, but why couldn't you have told us he was _alive_, at least?"

"Because you would have sucked him right back into your war," she said. She wasn't really talking about Jay. Neither was Nambu.

"Wasn't that his choice to make?"

"Of course it was, but you wouldn't have given him a choice. By hook or by crook, you'd've seduced him back. I didn't tell him about you, but I didn't go out of my way to prevent him from finding out, either. As far as you're concerned, there never is a choice. People work for you if you need them. There's no way to say no to you."

"It's not _me_ they're saying yes or no to, Teriani. It's the future of the world. And the world _needs_ Jay."

"Kozaburo, he _died_ for you! How much more can you ask?" There was a sudden fury in her voice. "You don't know when to quit. You can keep going until the end of time, and you can't recognize that other people burn out. Once someone has given all they have to give, you still demand more and more, until they're an empty shell with only ashes inside. You ran your Science Ninjas perilously close to that point, Koza, and that's wrong. If someone dies for you, if someone loses their loved ones for you, that's enough! You can't ask any more!"

And now she was answering the question he'd been asking all along, but they still would not admit who they were talking about. "I can and I must, if they're necessary to the safety of the world."

"_No one_ is that necessary. You can always find someone else and train them to fill that spot. No one is unique."

"Some are," he said softly, looking at her. "Some people are the only ones that can prevent certain things from happening, or stop them-- or at any rate, the only ones who can do so quickly enough that there's no loss of life."

"It doesn't _matter_ how unique or necessary you think someone is," she said in an anguished voice. "Once they die for you, you can't expect them to give any more! Even if some miracle brings them back from the dead, you can't change the fact that they died for you! They gave everything already-- there's no more left to give!"

"So how did you die, Teriani?"

There. He'd said it. He hadn't phrased it as it was phrased in his head, but he'd finally asked the question. _Why did you leave me?_

"There was a car crash," she said distantly. "The car crashed into a wall of force and was crushed... and David and Mitsuko were squashed and burned in the back seat..."

"I saw," he said, his voice numb. "And your body, or something much like it, brunt beyond recognition in the front."

"Really?" She looked at him with oddly fearful eyes. "I remember crawling from the wreckage, knowing what had happened to my babies, and knowing Galactor had done it... Then I woke up in a hospital, and they told me I was lucky to be alive. Lucky, when my children were dead. They didn't know who I was, and I didn't tell them. I bribed a doctor to have me declared legally dead."

"Was it you who stole your spaceship back from the Self Defense Forces?"

"Yes..." She frowned slightly. "I don't remember _how_ I did it, but I know I did. I was out of my mind with grief for a while; there are gaps in my memory."

"And if David is dead, who's that out there?"

"Oh... David died. Never mistake that. But I cloned him-- I had his tissue and a recording I'd made of his memories, made a year or so before he died. He's not the same David-- he has a different soul. But he's still my son-- even moreso, I suppose, since he's my creation as well as my flesh and blood. But I hadn't any tissues for Mitsuko. So I edited out the memories of you and of her, because I couldn't clone her. I thought he'd be happier that way."

Something in Nambu exploded then. "There's nothing you'll leave untouched, is there? There's nothing you won't edit, and cut, and program, for the sake of people's 'happiness'. Do you want to edit _my_ mind, Teriani? Do you want to cut out my memories of you?"

"If it would make you happy," she said.

"Dammit!" He slammed a fist into the nearest available surface that wasn't covered with crystals, a small section of the wall. "Happiness isn't the only thing that matters! Cows in the field are happy! What about mental integrity and free will? What about people's right to make decisions for themselves?"

"Have you ever been happy, Kozaburo?"

The question threw him off balance. _Once. With you_, he thought. "Why?"

"I would _be_ a cow in the field, to be happy. But who watches the watchers? No one can take the memories away from _me_, and I would give anything to forget... No, when one is deeply unhappy, mental integrity doesn't matter, Koza. It _doesn't_. You take happiness where you can. But you-- you've never trusted happiness. You'd rather have your mental integrity. I wouldn't. Who are you to deny others happiness if you don't want it for yourself?"

"Did it make you happy to leave me, Teriani?" he asked, bitter alkaline burning in him.

She looked away, and he knew she was hiding tears. "Leaving you was one of the most horrible experiences in my life," she said. "But it would have been worse to let you know I was alive. I loved you. I love you. But you would demand of me what I can't give anymore, and I didn't want you to know I couldn't give it, because I didn't want you to know what a coward I am... and now you hate me. Or at the least, have lost all respect for me. And I am bleeding to death, dying of your shame. But there's nothing else I can do. I'm too afraid."

"Of _what_?"

"Galactor killed my children--"

"Teriani, be realistic. Galactor didn't know who you _were._"

"All X needed to know was my race. Keiraines and Selectrans are hereditary enemies. I learned what he was after they died, and that's why. That's why I let myself be believed dead. Because X would've stopped at nothing to kill me."

"ISO can protect you--"

"Not if X finds out I exist. Eventually, he would destroy me. Just as eventually, he'll destroy you. If you want someone to help you fight X, I can give you the contact frequency of my associate-- for reasons of his own, he blames himself for Sosai X's presence here. I've given him some mindscience and information on Selectrans. But I myself don't dare help you openly."

"What about secretly?"

"I'm still Jay and Kyla's personal physician. For now, I'll _have_ to help you secretly, with them at least." She looked at the floor. "If I can help you without compromising myself-- rather, without risking my life and David's-- I will. But I am not brave, Kozaburo, not anymore." She looked back at him. "You were always so brave and noble, I can't expect you to understand... Someday Galactor will kill you for your bravery, and you will die nobly and accomplish much by dying. But you'll still be dead. And I will be alone here, with my demons, and I will know I killed you, and I will know my own life is a worthless, empty thing. I will know you died for my cowardice, and it'll drive me insane. But there's nothing else I can do. Don't you understand? I'm not strong enough anymore. There's nothing else I can do."

There was no resolution to this, no neat and happy ending. Something inside him crumbled to ash as he looked at her. She wanted him to say he forgave her, he still loved her, and it wasn't true. He had loved her for her mind, and her body was beautiful, yes, but he had also loved her for her courage. Once, she had been willing to die to be free, to do as she willed and not be used. That was gone. She was a broken thing now, and the woman he'd loved was dead. He had his answers, and they made him no happier than the questions had.

"I don't understand," he said, "but I will accept. I suppose I have no choice." He closed his eyes. "Anything you can do to help would be appreciated. I will stay in contact with you."

He turned and left. The words he had not said, the words that would not be true if he'd said them, were palpable by their absence, making a presence, a thick miasma of pain unalleviated. But he could not ease her pain without lying, and she would know a lie. He _had_ lost all respect for her, as she'd known he would, and he couldn't love her anymore.

He didn't say he was sorry, and neither did she. That would never be enough, for either of them. The silence clung to his skin, staying even after he'd left, even after he'd gotten in the car.

Chauffeur service was one of the few ISO perks Nambu utilized regularly. Cars had it in for Kozaburo Nambu, and he preferred to let someone else drive them whenever possible. This time, though, he wished he'd come alone. As the chauffeur drove him home, he wanted to weep for Teriani and how she had broken. But he could not weep with someone else there. He had to hide the tears as best he could, control himself as best he could, until he was home and there was no one to see the chink in his armor.


End file.
